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windows with glass. At this splendid palace lived Henry
Tudor (Henry VII), the victor of the Battle of Bosworth Field
(1485) and the true founder of English maritime power and he
it was who began the Tudors' long association with Greenwich.
It was here that Henry VIII, his daughter Mary and her half
sister Elizabeth, were born and spent much of their time, and
where Edward VI, son of Henry VIII. died at the early age of
16 years. At this palace the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, second wife
of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth I, was arrested
and taken by barge to the Tower of London to be beheaded,
and, within the precincts of this noble Greenwich residence, the
marriage of Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves was celebrated.
Henry VIII was the first king to put the Royal Navy on a
national basis. He established the Deptford and Woolwich Yards
and at the latter built the "Henri Grace a Dieu", the greatest
warship of her day. He christened the ship and appointed her
captain as the first Master of Trinity House, the corporation which
still controls the lighthouses and pilotage of the coasts of England.
At that time, Trinity House was located beside St. Nicholas, the
"seafarers'" church, in an area famous for its association with
Peter the Great, Admiral Benbow, John Evelyn, Christopher
Marlowe, Grinling Gibbons, Samuel Pepys and others.
Unquestionably Henry VIII loved Greenwich. Here within
easy water distance of London, he could hawk and hunt, watch
his merchant shipping bring valuable merchandise from abroad,
visit his ships of war anchored close by, and where he and his
great minister Cardinal Wolsey could welcome with grandest
pageantry the many illustrious visitors to his sumptuous palace.
It is difficult to conceive the magnificence and splendour of
the Palace of Placentia during this period for, set amidst gardens
laid out with flower beds, sparkling fountains, ornamental summer
houses and surrounded by a superb park designed by Le Notre of
Versailles fame, it contained everything that money could buy or
thought could devise to add to its grandeur. Floors were heavily
carpeted; rooms, furnished from the dis-established monasteries and
churches, were richly decorated, and the genius of the world's
greatest painters was expended on its walls and ceilings which were
hung with fine Arras cloth and tapestries, with silk and crimson
velvet from Montpelier in Gascony and with ermine, sable and
fox from Ireland: cloth of gold, blue cloth of silver broached upon
satin ground, white damask, all richlv emblazoned with Royal
emblems, were lavishly used: servants' liveries of blue murrev and
horses with "hobby harness" of green velvet and aglets of silver,
all were here assembled to receive distineuished personages from
the world of arts, crafts, trades and professions.