It Was Rebuilt By King Edward
III., Anno 1347, Who Placed In It A Dean, Twelve Secular Canons,
Thirteen Vicars,
Four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a
keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along
The Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at the
dissolution of monasteries in the reign of Edward VI. amounted to
near eleven thousand pounds per annum. Almost ever since the
dissolution, this chapel has been converted to the use we find it at
present, viz., for the session of the Lower House of Parliament,
who, before that time, usually assembled in the chapter-house
belonging to the Abbey, when the Parliament met at Westminster. The
Painted Chamber lies between the House of Lords and the House of
Commons, and here the committees of both houses usually meet at a
conference; but neither this nor the other remaining apartments of
this Palace of Westminster have anything in them that merit a
particular description.
The open place usually called Charing Cross, from a fine cross which
stood there before the grand rebellion, is of a triangular form,
having the Pall Mall and the Haymarket on the north-west, the Strand
on the east, and the street before Whitehall on the south. In the
middle of this space is erected a brazen equestrian statue of King
Charles I., looking towards the place where that prince was murdered
by the rebels, who had erected a scaffold for that purpose before
the gates of his own palace. This statue is erected on a stone
pedestal seventeen feet high, enriched with his Majesty's arms,
trophy-work, palm-branches, &c., enclosed with an iron palisade, and
was erected by King Charles II. after his restoration. The brick
buildings south-east of Charing Cross are mostly beautiful and
uniform, and the King's stables in the Mews, which lie north of it,
and are now magnificently rebuilding of hewn stone, will probably
make Charing Cross as fine a place as any we have in town;
especially as it stands upon an eminence overlooking Whitehall.
The Banqueting-house stands on the east side of the street adjoining
to the great gate of Whitehall on the south. This edifice is built
of hewn stone, and consists of one stately room, of an oblong form,
upwards of forty feet in height, the length and breadth
proportionable, having galleries round it on the inside, the ceiling
beautifully painted by that celebrated history-painter, Sir Peter
Paul Rubens: it is adorned on the outside with a lower and upper
range of columns of the Ionic and Composite orders, their capitals
enriched with fruit, foliage, &c., the intercolumns of the upper and
lower range being handsome sashed windows. It is surrounded on the
top with stone rails or banisters, and covered with lead.
St. James's Palace, where the Royal Family now resides in the winter
season, stands pleasantly upon the north side of the Park, and has
several noble rooms in it, but is an irregular building, by no means
suitable to the grandeur of the British monarch its master.
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