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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. Lavish use
was made of gold and blue cloths, silver broached upon satin
ground together with white damask, each and every piece richly
emblazoned with Royal emblems. Manifold servants with liveries
of blue murrey and horses with "hobby harness" of green velvet
and aglets of silver, all were here assembled to receive distinguished
personages from the world of arts, crafts, trades and professions.
From the beginning of the 15th century when Westminster had
again become the centre of government, the Palace of Placentia,
the favourite royal resort up to the time of James II (1685),
became the scene of countless tournaments, pageants and lavish
spectacles. Greenwich in its hey-day and during one of the most
colourful periods in English history, was the haunt of most
eminent people of the time and the great Elizabethan admirals,
statesmen, philosophers, writers, musicians and courtiers thronged
the riverside and splendid palace nestling at the foot of Greenwich
Hill in some 200 acres of beautiful sward and delightful woodlands.
Among these could be numbered the painters Holbein,
Rubens and Vandyke—men of letters such as Shakespeare, Bacon,
More, Jonson, Milton, (Sidney, Spencer, Evelyn and Pepys—
seamen and explorers such as Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Blake,
Cabot, Lord Howard, Davis, Frobisher, etc.—Tallis and Bull the
composers—Newton the celebrated philosopher-mathematician
and friend of Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal—Harvey, the
physiologist—Gresham, the astute merchant and financier and
"money-finder" for the Royal Households—the list seems endless
but, with such habitues, it was no wonder that the Court of
Greenwich was the most popular in Europe. A sign of its popularity
was the fact that in 1586, due to the concourse of visitors to the
Palace, local bakers were constrained to apply for a warrant to
obtain corn from various markets in Kent, a most exceptional
request. It was towards the end of this "golden age" in 1675, on
a Warrant of Charles II, that the Royal Observatory was founded
and, to the design of Christopher Wren, Flamsteed House was
built on the site of Duke Humphrey's tower.
Almost as if to create a surfeit of grand edifices, an exquisite
building designed by Inigo Jones with ceilings by Gentileschi and
originally intended by James I as a palace for his Queen, Anne of
Denmark, was commenced in 1616 and marked the introduction
for the first time in England of the Palladian style of domestic
architecture. The Queen's House, as it is now called, was finally
completed for Charles I and occupied by Queen Henrietta Maria