Whitehall.
The old Palace of Whitehall occupied a considerable space along the banks of the Thames, contiguous to where Westminster Bridge now stands; commencing at the present Privy Gardens, and ending near Scotland Yard. It extended also from the River to St. James’s Park, along the boundary of which, including the Cockpit and Spring Gardens, many of its buildings were situated. Hubert de Burgh, Justiciary of England in the reign of Henry III. who was its first owner, left it in 1242 to the Monastery of Black Friars, Holborn, who selling it to Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, it subsequently became the property of succeeding prelates, and was the York House more than once mentioned by Shakespeare. Henry VIII. taking a fancy to it, Wolsey, as Archbishop of York, found it prudent to dispose of the Palace to that arbitrary monarch, from whose time it became the residence of the sovereigns of England till 1695, when it was consumed by fire; and Queen Anne in consequence removed to St. James’s. Henry VIII. threw a gallery across the street to the new Park of St. James’s, which was formed about the same time from the grounds of a dissolved monastery of this name, and erected on that side of the way a Cockpit, a Tennis Court, &c. Many of Cromwell’s letters about this time are dated from the Cockpit, whilst his subsequent ones are usually dated Whitehall. The Banqueting House, now commonly called Whitehall, which was built by James I. in the room of an old building devoted by Elizabeth to a similar purpose, alone escaped the fire; and still remains a monument of the purer taste introduced by Inigo Jones. It was the only part of the intended new structure built by him. The roof was painted by Rubens, 1629, who received from Charles I. three thousand pounds and knighthood for his labour.