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Windsor was followed during his own and the succeeding reign. The halls of Westminster and Eltham were rebuilt by Richard II.; Kenilworth by John of Gaunt; Dartington, in Devonshire, by Holland Duke of Exeter. Crosby Hall, in London, was finished by the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. We here subjoin the dimensions of some of the principal halls in castles and palaces before the end of the fifteenth century, ranged in order of their size, as partly revised :

Westminster (1397)
Durham Castle

Length
in feet.

Height in feet. 90

36

238.9

Breadth in feet. 67 to 68

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415. Generally, in respect of plan, the internal arrangement of these halls was very similar. The high table, as we have observed, was elevated on a platform above the level of the floor, and was reserved for the lord and his family, with the superior guests. Round the walls separate tables and benches were distributed for the officers of the household and dependents. The centre was occupied by the great open fire-place, directly over which in the roof was placed a turret, denominated a louvre, for conveying away the smoke. Bolton Castle we find the chimneys in the walls; but, perhaps, those at Conway and Kenilworth are earlier proof of the alteration. The roofs with which some of these halls are spanned exhibit mechanical and artistic skill of the first order. The thrust, by the simplest means, is thrown comparatively low down in the best examples, so as to lessen the horizontal effect against the walls, and thus dispense with considerable solidity in the buttresses. Fig. 196. is a section of the celebrated Hall of Westminster, by which our observation will be better understood. These roofs were framed of oak or ches

nut.

Whether, when of the latter, it was imported from Portugal and Castile, is a question that has been discussed, but not determined, by antiquaries. Large stone corbels and projecting consoles were attached to the side walls, and were disposed in bays called severeys between each window. Upon their ends, demi-angels were generally carved, clasping a large escochion to their breasts. Near to the high table, a projecting or bay window, termed an oriel, was introduced. It was fully glazed, frequently containing stained glass of the arms of the family and its alliances. Here was the standing cupboard

which contained the plain and parcel-gilt plate. The rere-dos was a sort of framed canopy hung with tapestry, and fixed behind the sovereign or chieftain. The walls were generally lined to about a third of their height with panelled oak or strained suits of tapestry. It was during this æra that privy chambers, parlours, and bowers found their way into the castle. Adjoining to, or nearly connected with the hall, a spacious room, generally with a bay window, looking on to the quadrangle, was planned as a receiving-room for the guests, as well before dinner as after. This was decorated with the richest tapestry and cushions embroidered by the ladies, and was distinguished by the name of the presence or privychamber. The females of the family had another similar apartment, in which their time was passed in domestic occupations and amusements. This last room was called my lady's bower or parlour, and here she received her visitors. Bay windows were never used in outer walls, and seldom others, excepting those of the narrowest shape.

416. The dawn of improvement in our domestic architecture opened in the latter part of the period, during which also brick came very much into use in England as a building material. "Michael de la Pole," as we learn from Leland's Itinerary, "marchant of Hull, came into such high favour with King Richard II. that he got many privileges for the towne. And in hys tyme the toune was wonderfully augmented yn building, and was enclosyd with ditches, and the waul begun; and in continuance endid, and made all of brike, as most part of the houses at that time was. In the waul be four principal gates of brike." After

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enumerating twenty-five towers, " M. de la Pole," we find from Leland, “buildid a goodlie house of brike, against the west end of St. Marye's churche, lyke a palace, with goodly orcharde and garden at large, also three houses besides, every on of which hath a tower of brik." (Itin. vol. i. p. 57.) This was the first instance of so large an application of brick in England.

417. One of the most important parts of the castle was the great gateway of entrance, in which were combined, at the same time, the chief elements of architectural beauty and military defence. It usually occupied the central part of the screen wall, which had the aspect whence the castle could be most conveniently approached. Two or more lofty towers flanked either side, the whole being deeply corbelled; a mode of building brought by the Arabs into Europe, and afterwards adopted by the Lombards and Normans. The corbel is a projecting stone, the back part whereof, which lies in the wall, being balanced by the superincumbent mass, it is capable of supporting a parapet projecting beyond the face of the wall rising from the horizontal course laid immediately on the corbels, between which the said horizontal course was pierced for the purpose of enabling the besieged to drop missiles or molten metal on the heads of the assailants. The corbel is often carved with the head of a giant or monster, which thus seems attached to the walls. In John of Gaunt's entrance gateway at Lancaster, the arch is defended by overhanging corbels with pierced apertures between them, and on either side are two light watch-towers crested with battlements.

418. Of the military architecture of this time, a perfect idea may be obtained from the two remarkable towers of Warwick Castle (fig. 197.), which were erected (in 1395) by Thomas de Beauchamp Earl of Warwick. The taller one rises 105 ft. above its base, and is 38 ft. diameter, having five stories, which are separated from each other by groined ceilings. In the interior, the walls of the state chambers were painted; a practice introduced into England in the beginning of the thirteenth century; and they were

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examples that famed curiosity the triangularly formed bridge of Croyland in Lincolnshire, erected over the confluence of three streams. Bridge architecture was in many instances so necessarily connected with the construction of a fortress, that it may almost, in this age, be taken as a branch of military architecture.

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420. This style exhibits Arches, less acute and more open (fig. 198. from York Minster), the forms varying. Columns. The central and detached shafts now worked together into one, from experience of the weakness of those of the previous style, exceedingly various in their combinations. The Windows are larger, divided by mullions into several lights spreading and dividing at top into leaves, flowers, fans, wheels, and fanciful forms of endless variety. These marks are constant, but in the proportionate breadth there is much variation, for after having expanded in the reigns of Edward I. and II., they grew narrower again in proportion to their height in that of Edward III. and also sharper. The head was then formed of lines just perceptibly curved, sometimes even by two straight lines, sometimes just curved a little above the haunches, and then rectilinear to the apex. Eastern and western windows very lofty and ample, and splendidly decorated with painted glass. Roof or Ceiling. The vaulting more decorated. principal ribs spread from their imposts running over the vault like tracery, or rather with transoms divided into many angular compartments, and ornamented at the angles with heads, orbs, historical or legendary pictures, &c., elaborately coloured and gilded. Ornaments. - More various and laboured, but not so elegant and graceful in character, as in the preceding style. Niches and tabernacles with statues in great abundance. Tiers of small ornamental arches are frequent. The pinnacles are neither so lofty nor tapering, but are more richly decorated with leaves, crockets, &c. Sculpture is introduced in much profusion, and is frequently painted and gilt. Screens, stalls, doors, pannelled ceilings, and other ornaments, in carved and painted wood. (See Book III. Chap. 3.)

Fig. 198.

ARCH OF YORK MINSTER.

The

421. The principal examples of the ornamented English style in cathedral churches, are at Exeter, the nave and choir. Lichfield, uniformly. At Lincoln, the additions to the central tower. At Worcester, the nave. York, nave, choir, and western front. At Canterbury, transept. At Gloucester, transept and cloisters begun. Norwich, the spire and tower. Salisbury, spire and additions. Bristol, the nave and choir. Chichester, the spire and choir. Ely, Our Lady's Chapel and the central louvre. Hereford, the chapter-house and cloisters, now destroyed. In the later part of the period, the choir at Gloucester; the nave at Canterbury Bishop Beckington's additions at Wells, and from the upper transept to the great east window at Lincoln. In conventual churches, for the earlier part of the period, the western façade of Howden (1320.), Chapel of Merton College, Oxford. Gisborne Priory, Yorkshire. Chapel at New College, Oxford. St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster. The additions to the pediments of the choir at Kirkstall, Yorkshire. St. Mary's in York. Kirkham in Yorkshire, and the choir of Selby, in the same county. For the later part of

the period, at Tewkesbury, the choir. At Ely Cathedral, St. Mary's Chapel, Croyland façade in Lincolnshire. Beverley Minster in Yorkshire. Chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford. Eton College Chapel, Bucks. Chapel on the bridge at Wakefield in Yorkshire, built by Edward IV. in memory of his father Edward Duke of York; and the Beauchamp Chapel t Warwick. In parochial churches, for the early part of the period, examples may be referred to at Grantham, Lincolnshire. Attelborough, Norfolk. Higham Ferrers. Northamptonshire. St. Michael, Coventry. Truro, Cornwall. Witney, Oxfordshire. Stratfordupon-Avon, Warwickshire. St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. Boston, Lincolnshire; its remarkable lantern tower, which is 262 ft. high, was begun in 1309, and was in progress of execution during the whole reign of Edward III. The expense of it having been chiefly defrayed by the merchants of the Hanse Towns. St. Mary, Edmunds Bury, Suffolk. Maidstone, Kent; and Ludlow, Salop. For the later part of the period, St. Mary Overy, Southwark. Thaxted and Saffron Walden, Essex. Lowth and Stamford, Lincolnshire. Campden, Gloucestershire. St. Mary Redcliff and the tower of St. Stephen, Bristol. Taunton and Churton Mendip, Somersetshire. Lavenham, Suffolk. Manchester College. St. Mary's, Oxford. Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire. Wakefield, Yorkshire. Doncaster, Yorkshire. Newark-upon-Trent. Heckington, Lincolnshire. Mould Gresford and Wrexham in Flintshire. Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Octangulur towers of St. Margaret's. Norwich, and All Saints, York.

SECT. V.

FLORID ENGLISH OR TUDOR STYLE.

422. "There is," as Dr. Henry observes, "a certain perfection in art to which human genius may aspire with success, but beyond which, it is the apprehension of many, that improvement degenerates into false taste and fantastic refinement. The rude simplicity of Saxon architecture was (ultimately) supplanted by the magnificence of the ornamental Gothic; but magnificence itself is at last exhausted, and it terminated during the present period in a style, which some, with an allusion to literature, denominate the Florid.' is a style censurable as too ornamental, departing from the grandeur peculiar to the Gothic, without acquiring proportional elegance; yet its intricate and redundant decorations are well calculated to rivet the eye, and amaze, perhaps bewilder, the mind." The period of the style is from 1460, to the dissolution of the religious houses in 1537, and comprehends, therefore, the reigns of Edward IV. and V., Richard III., Henrys VII. and VIII.

It

423. The ecclesiastical buildings of this æra are few. Somersetshire, a county devoted to the cause of the House of Lancaster, from the gratitude or policy of Henry VII., boasts perhaps more churches than any other county in the florid style; still they are very few, and the superb chapel which that monarch erected at Westminster is the best specimen that can be adduced for giving the reader a proper and correct idea of the Florid or Tudor style. There is doubtless an abundance of examples in oratories, porches, and small chapels, sepulchral sacella and the like; but beyond them we could cite very few entire sacred buildings; and those will be hereafter appended to this section as in the preceding ones. In civil, or rather domestic architecture, the case was far different: a very great change took place; and we shall endeavour to place a succinct account of it from the Rev. Mr. Dallaway's work, to which we have already been much indebted. The fifteenth century exhibits to us a number of vast mansions of the noble and opulent, wherein the characteristic style of the immediately preceding castles was not entirely abandoned, but superseded and mixed up with a new and peculiar one. The household books of the nobility which have come to our knowledge, indicate a multitudinous set of servants and retainers, for the reception of whom a great area of ground must have been covered, and in which provision, by the number of apartments, was made for a noble display of hospitality. This circumstance, of course, induced a gorgeous style peculiar to the earlier Tudor æra, of most of whose splendid mansions no memorial now exists but in the records of the times. But for the purpose of bringing a view of the whole subject under the eye of the reader, a brief recapitulation will here be necessary. The first palace of the Norman kings was the Tower of London, which was a strictly military residence. At Westminster was a palace of William Rufus, to whom Westminster Hall owes its original foundation. At Oxford a palace was built by Henry I., and at that place he kept his Christmas in 1115, as in 1229 and 1267 Henry III. did in the vicinity at Woodstock. It was at this place that Henry II. built a house of retirement, which has furnished the subject of some well-known legends. Henry III. is said to have refounded the palace at Westminster, which was much enlarged by Edward III. This, from the time of Rufus, its founder, to the reign of Richard II., to whom it owed its completion in the state apartments, with its magnificent hall and bijou of a chapel (St. Stephen's), had attained a greater extent than any contem

porary palace in Europe. Edward III., besides erecting his suburban palace at Kennington had re-edified and greatly extended Windsor Castle as a habitable fortification. Henry IV. inherited John of Gaunt's castle of Kenilworth and the Savoy in London, to both of which he made great additions. His gallant and victorious son was too much occupied with his military affairs to pay much attention to such matters; but many of his commanders, by the exorbitant ransoms they exacted of their French prisoners, were enabled to construct mansions of vast extent in those counties where their revenues commanded influence. Of these, as signal examples, may be cited Hampton Court in Herefordshire by Sir Rowland Lenthal; and Ampthill, Bedfordshire, by Sir John Cornwal Lord Fanhope At Greenwich, a palace of great beauty, in the early part of the reign of Henry VI., was built by the regent Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, which, from its superiority over others, was by its founder called Placentia or Plaisance. This was completed by Edward IV., and is now remembered as the birthplace of Queen Elizabeth. The Lord Treasurer Cromwell expended a large sum on his residence at Tattershall in Lincolnshire, and at Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire, as did Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Boteler, respectively, at Sudley in Gloucestershire, and Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, all of which are now either destroyed or only in ruins. Additions were made by Edward IV. to Nottingham Castle, and by his brother Richard III. to Warwick Castle and that of Middleburg in Yorkshire.

424. Upon the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII., on the ruins of a former palace at Shene in Surrey, which after the repairs he bestowed upon it was destroyed by fire, built a palace, whereto he gave the name of Richmond, in allusion to his former title, a name which was afterwards given to the beautiful town on the Thames, in its vicinity. The dimensions of the state apartments in this splendid building, whereof not a vestige now remains, are to be found in the Survey of 1649, when it was offered for sale by the Commissioners of Parliament. They abounded with bay windows of capricious formation, with rectangular and semicircular projections, producing a picturesque effect; and to add to its fantastic appearance, there were many octangular towers, surmounted with cupolas of the same plan, whose mitres as they rose were fringed with rich crockets. They were bulbous in their general form, thus bearing a resemblance in contour to the royal crown of the period.

"1.

425. The Tudor style, in domestic architecture, is thus divided by Mr. Dallaway. That just alluded to; 2. The variations under Henry VIII.; 3. The Elizabethan style” (which will form a separate section), "as it admitted of Italian ornament in the designs of John of Padua and his followers, until the time of Inigo Jones.

426. The reign of Henry VIII. supplies numberless instances of the gorgeous expense to which the nobility and gentry proceeded in the productions of our art. The example

set by the monarch himself was witnessed in no less than two royal mansions, each large enough to contain his numerous retinue. The following are the palaces that were built or repaired by Henry VIII.: —

1. Beaulieu, or Newhall, Essex.

2. Hunsdon, Herts, originally built by Sir John Oldhall, temp. Edw. IV

3. Ampthill, Bedfordshire.

4. Nonsuch, Surrey.

5. York Place, Whitehall, Westminster.

6. Pridewell and Blackfriars, London, for the reception of the emperor Charles V.

7. St. James's, Westminster.

8. Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, the jointure of the divorced Queen Catharine of Arragon.

9. Sheriff Hutton, Yorkshire, given for the residence of Henry Duke of Richmond, the king's
natural son.

10. King's Langley, Herts.

It was natural that the courtiers of such a monarch should vie with each other in erecting sumptuous houses in the provinces where they were seated. Wolsey, besides the progress he had made, at the time of his fall, in his colleges at Christchurch, Oxford, and Ipswich, had completed Hampton Court, and rebuilt the episcopal residences of York House (afterwards Whitehall), and Esher in Surrey. Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, in his palace at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, almost rivalled the cardinal, and perhaps might have done so entirely if he had not been hurried to the scaffold before his mansion was completed. Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, rose under the orders of the Duke of Suffolk (Charles Brandon). The Duke of Norfolk and his accomplished son, the Earl of Surrey, were, as appears from the descriptions of Kenninghall, Norfolk, and Mount Surrey, near Norwich, magnificent in the mansions they required for their occupation. We shall merely add the following list (which might, if it were necessary, be much augmented) of some other mansions of note. They are- 1. Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. 2. Cowdray, Sussex, destroyed by fire in 1793. 3. Hewer Castle, Kent. 4. Gosfield Hall, Essex, perfect. 5. Hengreave Hall, Suffolk, perfect, and whereof a beautiful work has been published by John Gage, Esq. (now Rookwode), a descendant of its ancient possessors, 6. Layer Marney, Essex, now in ruins. 7. Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, in ruins. 8. Hunsdon House, Herts, rebuilt. 9. South Wingfield, Derbyshire, dilapidated. 10. Hill Hall, Essex, built by Sir Thomas Smyth, in 1542. 11. Wolterton (see fig. 199.)

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