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

4
HAMPTON COURT
civil strife of the fifteenth century. As the fifteenth
century advanced castle-building ceased. Towns were
still walled, but private dwellings in England— for in
Scotland and Ireland, as well as on the Borders, the
need for defensive buildings was still apparent —
gradually dispensed with the visible tokens of the age
of insecurity. Battlements became an ornament rather
than a protection. Moats were no longer dug,
though here Wolsey kept up the fashion of the former
age, andbefore the great gate of his house had a deep
and wide ditch with a drawbridge of the ancient sort.
The details of the houses followed the principle which
had begun to rule their general appearance. Windows
were made much larger all through the century, till
with the sixteenth century we have the great windows
which are so characteristic of the building of the Cardinal
and the King. The great dining-hall declined,
though in houses of much state it survived, as at
Hampton Court,in much of its old splendour. The
custom of the great men dining in common with their
households was dying out, as More's " Utopia," in its
plea for a common hall and common hospitality, so
clearly shows. On the other hand, the comforts of
the individual were far more carefully attended to.
The first court of Wolsey's great building consists
entirely of guest-chambers. The lavish decoration
within attempted to counterbalance the economy of
architectural detail without. Windows, in which the
tracery no longer excites admiration by its beauty
and grace, were filled with rich glass and overhung