Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

ASSOCIATIONS 143
The proportion of the work, and the domestic
character which it was evidently the design of Wren
that it should bear, has unfortunately been recently
much spoiled by the addition of somewhat mean seats
up the centre, which was intended to have been a wide
free space, for processions and groups at royal weddings
and the like. Purists would endeavour to restore the
chapel to its state under Wolsey, or at least under
Henry VIII., but a wider sympathy should preserve so
beautiful an example of the taste of our nearer forefathers
in church matters from destruction. There
are not too many of the " Queen Anne" chapels in
existence; we could better spare some better things.
And the chapel at Hampton Court,like that at Trinity
College, Oxford, should be suffered to endure without
further " restoration " as a valuable memorial of an
interesting epoch in ecclesiastical art.
The chapel is interesting, too, from the scenes that
have taken place within its walls. There Edward VI.
was christened with great pomp, his sister Mary standing
godmother. The high altar was " richly garnished
with plate and stuff," and the font of solid silver gilt
was set up on a stage in front of it. The long procession
passed through great part of the palace.
A few days later the coffin of Queen Jane Seymour
rested there before it was taken to Windsor. When
King Edward himself was king, he sat long hours
in the chapel listening to the dreary sermons of the
prolix ministers of the day. Protestant Dissenters may
feel a special interest in a chapel in which doubtless