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

24
HAMPTON COURT
had already put on an air suited to the new design.
How much the taste of the age approved this may
be seen by what Defoe adds a little later, speaking,
even if he be himself ironical, most unquestionably
the sentiment of his day.
" When Hampton Court will find such another
favourable juncture as in King William's time, when
the remainder of her ashes shall be swept away, and
her complete fabric, as designed by King William, shall
be finished,Icannot tell; but if ever that shall be,I
know no palace in Europe, Versailles excepted, which
can come up to her, either for beauty and magnificence,
or for extent of building and the ornaments
attending it."
The plan drawn up by Wren in 1699 shows less the
extent of the destruction contemplated than the sumptuousness
of the new scheme. The great approach
was to have been through Bushey Park, by the Lion
Gates, to a new entrance court, which would have
been 300 feet long by 230 feet broad. All the buildings
on the north side up to the great hall would
have been swept away. The great hall itself was to
have been the entrance to the Palace. Great flights
of steps and a fine colonnade were to have led to it.
From the hall itself was to have been the entrance to
the rest of the Palace, to the Clock court directly, and
by intercommunication to all other parts.
Wren did not confine himself to a general design.
Every detail, it is hardly too much to say, passed
under his eye. An estimate, dated April 2, 1699,