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

THE QUEEN'S CHAPEL 145
very happily with William's life, and his taste in it
did not agree with that of the historical Church of
England. He would wear his hat in Hampton Court
chapel, and his wife must needs turn out the fiddles
and flutes and bass viols from the service. They set
themselves against the old customs. They would not
touch (and the Jacobites said they could not) for the
King's evil; and so the quaint and solemn office was
laid aside till " good Queen Anne " succeeded.
Anne had not her brother-in-law's delight in destruction;she
contented herself with redecorating the
whole, and adding the carving now at the top of the
panels, the delicate designs of which are from the hand
of Grinling Gibbons. At the same time the royal
pew assumed its modern aspect of decorous comfort,
and the ceiling above it received the painted cherubim
who support the crown over the initials of Anna
Regina. A new organ too was added, which with
some changes still survives. A later restoration of
the roof in 1847 cannot be remembered without suspicion;
but on the whole, we may be thankful that the
chapel bears such clear marks ofits history.
The Tudor and Stewart sovereigns had been content
to worship, often daily, in church like their subjects ;
but the Hanoverians were accustomed to take their
religion more easily, and under the Georges there
appears the quaint little private chapel for the Queen,
still pointed out, and filled now with the most inappropriate
pictures (as indeed it is said to have been
in George II.'s day), in which the chaplains read
K