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

234
HAMPTON COURT
tell us that he has seen the vision of the White Lady
who weeps and wrings her hands.
Or those two young cavaliers whose bones were
found under the pavement of the cloister in the
Fountain Court, and whose ghostly presence was felt
in the rooms of a lady near; do they now sleep well
where they lie in Hampton Churchyard ? What
tragedy lies behind their burying in the " Cloister
Green"in hugger-mugger ?
Edward VI.'s nurse, or Mistress Penn — not the
"Mother Jak " (so labelled) of Holbein's drawing,
whom we now know to be Margaret Clement, Sir
Thomas More's adopted child :— cannot she rest in
peace in Hampton Church under her fine tomb — she
" Whose virtue guided hathher shippe unto the quiet rode? "
She died in 1562 of small-pox, and her body reposed,
they tell you, till 1829, when the old church was
destroyed. She then returned to the Palace, and
worked her ancient spinning-wheel in a room that
had remained concealed for two centuries. She walks,
so say those who have seen her, in a " long grey robe
with a hood over her head, and her lanky hands outstretched
before her; " and, like Hamlet's father to
the sentries " on their watch in the dead waist and
middle of the night " she comes, andbeing challenged,
passes into air.
Hampton Court is certainly the very place where
This is one of the very few points where Mr. Ernest Law is
at fault (" History ofHampton Court," vol. i.p. 197, note 2).