3 or 4 Romish breviaries, with a great deal of miniature, and monkish painting and gilding." There was also another inscribed by Henry the Seventh, which had been given by him to his daughter Margaret, afterwards Queen of Scots. Among the manuscripts were the "Exercises and Journal of Edward the Sixth ;" a Discourse in High Dutch, on "ye Processe of the Philosophers great Elixir, represented in divers pieces of excellent miniature;" and a French work," being an Institution of Physic," with the plants of the botanical part "curiously painted in miniature." In the private lodgings contiguous to the library, were "divers of the best pictures" of Raphael, Titian, &c. and, above all, the Noli me tangere of our Blessed Saviour to Mary Magdalen, of Hans Holbein, "than which I never saw so much reverence and kind of heavenly astonishment expressed in a picture." Among the other curiosities were intaglios, medals, clocks, watches, and pendules of exquisite workmanship,

In January 1682, the Morocco ambassador, named Hamet, was admitted with his suite to a public audience of their Majesties, in the Banquetting-house, at Whitehall; and about a fortnight afterwards he partook of "a greate banquet of sweetemeates and musiq❞ in the "glorious apartments" of the Duchess of Portsmouth (Louise de Querouaille) "at which both the Ambass. and his retinue behaved themselves with extraordinary moderation and modesty, tho' placed about a long table, a lady between two Moores, and amongst these were the King's natural children, viz.— Lady Lichfield and Sussex, the Dutchess of Ports

mouth, Nelly [Gwynne], &c. concubines, and cattell of that sort, as splendid as jewells and excesse of bravery could make them.*"

On the 28th of July 1683, Prince George of Denmark, was married to the Lady Anne (afterwards Queen Anne), the Duke of York's daughter, at Whitehall. In March 1684, there was so great a concourse of people, with their children, "to be touched for the evil," at this Palace, "that 6 or 7 were crushed to death by pressing at the Chirurgeon's doore for tickets.”+

* "Memoirs," p. 539. Evelyn has been particularly lavish in bis description of the apartments of the Duchess of Portsmouth. In one place, he states them to be "curiously furnished, and with ten times the richnesse and glory beyond the Queenes ;" and in another, he enters into the following curious details :

"Following his Maty this morning thro' the gallerie, I went, with the few who attended him, into the Dutchess of Portsmouth's dressing-roome, within her bed-chamber, where she was in her morning loose garment, her maids combing her, newly out of her bed, his Mat, and the gallants standing about her; but that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice or thrice pulled down and rebuilt to satisfie her prodigal and expensive pleasures, whilst her Matys dos not exceede some gentlemen's ladies in furniture and accommodation. Here I saw the newfabriq of French tapissry, for designe, tendernesse of worke, and incomparable imitation of the best paintings, beyond any thing I had ever beheld. Some pieces had Versailles, St. Ger'man's, and other palaces of the French King, with huntings, figures and landskips, exotiq fowls, and all to the life rarely don. Then for Japan cabinets, screenes, pendule clocks, greate vases of wrought plate, table stands, chimney furniture, sconces, branches, braseras, &c., all of massie silver, and out of number, besides some of her Matys best paintings."-Ibid. p. 583.

+ Ibid. p. 571.

Charles the Second was seized with an apoplectic fit in his bed-chamber at Whitehall, on Monday, the 1st of February 1685, and he died on the Saturday following, after receiving extreme unction and the Sacrament, according to the rites of the Romish Church, from the hands of Father Hudlestone, a Catholic priest, who had assisted in his escape from Worcester.* His illness had been quite unexpected, as may be inferred from the following passage in Evelyn :

"I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulnesse of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se'nnight I was witnesse of, the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine, &c., a French boy singing love songs, in that glorious gallery, whilst about 20 of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset, round a large table, a bank of at least £2,000 in gold before them; upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust!"

Immediately after Charles's decease, a council was held here, and his brother James was proclaimed king at Whitehall Gate, in the "very forme his grandfather K. James I. was, after ye death of Queene Elizabeth."

Charles had been a concealed Romanist during his whole reign, and the measures of his Government cannot be properly understood without adverting to that fact. Many singular cir. cumstances attending his illness and decease, will be found recorded in Evelyn's "Memoirs," vol. i, pp. 580-583; and Ellis's "Original Letters," 1st series, vol. iii, pp. 333-338; and 2d series, vol. iv, pp. 74-80.

About a week afterwards, the new King went "to masse publickly in y little Oratorie at the Duke's lodgings, the doores being set wide open." On the 5th of March, Evelyn writes, " To my great griefe I saw the new pulpit set up in the Popish Oratorie, at Whitehall, for the Lent preaching, masse being publicly said, and the Romanists swarming at Court with greater confidence than had ever been seene in England since the Reformation."

In the summer of the same year, the King commenced a new range of buildings on the garden side, at Whitehall, including a Chapel and lodgings for the Queen (Mary d'Este), a council chamber, and other offices; all of which were completed in the following year. Evelyn states, that the embroidery of the Queen's bed cost £3,000, and that the carving about the chimney-piece, by Gibbons, was "incomparable.” He also describes the new chapel as very sumptuously fitted up, and enriched with four statues, in white marble, by the same artist, of St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the Church. The altar-piece was the Salutation, which, with other paintings, was by Verrio. In a closet opposite to the altar, was a throne, "very glorious" for the King and Queen.

The intemperate and unceasing endeavours of the Court to restore Popery, and again subjugate the nation to the superstitions of Catholicism, produced the glorious Revolution of 1688;-and on the 17th of December in that year, the bigot King James quitted Whitehall and his Throne for ever! "On the following day," Evelyn says, "the Prince of Orange

comes to St. James's, and fills Whitehall with Dutch guards."

On the 13th of February 1689, Mary, Princess of Orange, arrived at this Palace, and, on the succeeding day, her husband and herself were proclaimed King and Queen of England, to which dignity they had been raised by the Convention Parliament.

But the glories of Whitehall were now verging to a close.

The destructive element of fire was destined to be its ruin. Of the first accident of this kind, Evelyn speaks thus, under the date April 10th, 1691 :-"This night a sudden terrible fire burnt down all the buildings over the stone gallery at Whitehall, to the water side, beginning at the apartment of the late Dutchesse of Portsmouth (wch had been pulled down and rebuilt no lesse than 3 times to please her), and consuming other lodgings of such lewd creatures, who debauch'd both K. Cha. 2, and others, and were his destruction."

The second and final catastrophe occurred on the 4th of January 1697-8, when the entire Palace, except the Banquetting-house, some inferior offices, and two or three noblemen's lodgings, fell a prey to the flames. Evelyn, in one expressive line, thus generalizes the destruction:- "Whitehall burnt; nothing but walls and ruins left."

Besides their Majesties' apartments, about 150 houses, "most of which were the lodgings and habitations of the chief nobility," were destroyed, and about twenty others are stated to have been blown up with gunpow der to prevent further damage. Sir Christopher Wren, whose apartments as surveyor-general were within the Palace, and the Lord Cutts, who commanded the troops,