Hampton Court Secrets of Henry VIIIs Palace

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Hampton Court a 500 year old English royal residence forever linked to Henry the eighth and his many wives as soon as he say the words Hampton Court you think of Henry the eighth it was at the heart of royal life at the heart of scandal behind the grand facade lie the dark secrets of the British Royals extraordinary lives of passion and excess this is the world of Hampton Court Palace one of the greatest surviving medieval palaces of the world just ten miles from London the River Thames links Hampton Court with the capital city each year hundreds of thousands of visitors tour its palatial rooms and the sixty acres of formal landscaped gardens this is the story of the kings and queens who created Hampton Court each adding their own taste and style each contributing to this unique fusion of architectural styles hampton court story is a tale of two palaces it's these two palaces of botting each other with these very very different architecture and different historical times and you can walk over these thresholds from one palace to the other every part of Hampton Court Palace holds its own secrets some of the greatest characters in British royal history have graced these walls for some the palace became a gilded cage within these walls they lived out a hidden story love and relationships eroded by power and jealousy Hampton Court definitely has a darker side yes it's this splendid sumptuous beautiful palace but I think the history of it particularly in Henry's reign has left its mark Henry the eighth was Hampton courts first royal resident history's most infamous Manik big brash larger-than-life six wives came and went in a brutal and bloody reign divorced beheaded died divorced beheaded survived they were the center of everything one minute and they're having their head cut off the next and they all left their mark on Hampton Court the palace played host to every wife the Great Hall where Anne Boleyn once danced with her King the chapel that hides Jane Seymour's heart and lungs beneath its altar the haunted gallery where Katherine Howard begged for her life crowned king aged just 18 young Henry Tudor had almost infinite wealth and infinite power with scores of palaces to choose from Hampton Court was his summer favorite this was his pleasure palace vast parklands for hunting and sport sumptuous rooms for entertaining and extravagance Henry had between fifty and sixty palaces he invested so much money in building and buying palaces and he could move from Palace to Palace along the river Hampton Court was in the countryside and it was a place where he could go for fun and to just enjoy himself completed in 1515 the newly built palace was the pinnacle of Tudor fashion and style but the grandest house in the land wasn't built by Henry the eighth it was designed as the home of the Kings closest advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as Chancellor Wolsey was the second most important man in the land Thomas Wolsey was the King's chief minister for almost fifteen years he managed all the business of running the estate and at this time Henry liked to play more than he liked to do business so was he kept that all away from him and kept the King happy Wolsey is about to become a cardinal in 1515 and it's in January of that year that his workmen arrived with their cranes and their ropes and the materials by the side of the River Thames and they transform a pretty humble manner of the Knights Hospitaller into this extraordinary Palace the Cardinals Palace built on a European scale Woolsey spent lavishly on the palace the patronage of a king had brought him wealth beyond measure dignitaries from across Europe were beating a path to his door and Wolsey needed a home to match his prestige he spared no expense and used redbrick the new Wonder material of the day Hampton Court changed the rules of the game this thing was absolutely enormous and it glittered not just the brick itself but the fact that the brick was painted in red and then it was painted in black to give you the diamond pattern and then all the white mortar joints were painted on top this thing was like an illustration of itself it was in Technicolor the building a home fit for a king can be a dangerous game the opulence of Woolsey's home provoked gossip that it was richer than any royal palace the Cardinal needed to be careful upsetting Henry could cost you your head what Wolsey says is I'm building it on your behalf your highness of course I'm because that's what I'm doing because he's got a he's got to keep two people happy one is the Pope and the other one is the king so you see Roman emperors in the courtyard you see the signs of him being a cardinal but you also see the accommodation for the king who is a frequent visitor Woolsey was also keen to ingratiate himself with Henry's wife Catherine of Aragon was a blue blooded Spanish princess and her marriage to the king cemented a key political alliance our own royal emblem is etched into the stonework of Hampton Court the seeds of the pomegranate fruit represent the potency of her kingdom this really poignant isn't it because you've got the pomegranates and you've got the Rose the Tudor Rose of Henry the eighth and this says everything you need to know about what he thought about the relationship early on that that was it was permanent so permanent that he'd carved it into the very stonework it seems Henry was truly dedicated to his wife he and Catherine were together for nearly 24 years longer than all his other marriages put together catherine started off as henry's true love and she was his beautiful blond-haired Spanish princess very exotic he was very gallant in his courtship of Catherine Henry and Catherine were frequent visitors to Hampton Court and Kings do not travel night the way that Judah palaces work is that the King doesn't live in one of them all the time but when he did come into town he would bring with him his eight hundred courtiers and then the place was absolutely packed the logistics were terrifying almost a thousand people suddenly needing to be fed in regal style this is the entrance to Hampton courts kitchens the largest surviving 16th century kitchens in the world when the Quarter King Henry the eighth right here at Hampton Court these kitchens burst into life you're at the heart of a food factory it's like the back of a supermarket there are carts coming in every minute being unpacked the food being moved to stores this dead space suddenly filled with 200 cooks desperate to get that royal meal on the table 600 maybe a thousand people want their dinner twice a day the workload was immense the cooks were toil from dawn until dusk the kitchens walls were regularly whitewashed to keep the room as bright as possible allowing the cooks to work even as darkness fell the palace feasts headed by King Henry at the top table would last for seven hours or more these kitchens for Henry are part of his magnificence his status everything about this palace has to be that very best from the decoration upstairs to the closed the King's wearing and the food he eats and the food he gives you that's more important the Tudor Court just loved its roasted meat it was at the heart of every feast you've got a fireplace that belonged to Henry the eighth and there is burning still before you can do anything you're gonna have to have a really big old roasting fire looking at about a ton of fuel a day going on for each file that's a lot of money you need something to put the meat on you need a spit and not one there but loads for every fireplace and to make anything cook on here someone's got to turn the handle not once or twice but all the time each fire would hit 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and there were at least six in every roasting room I'm really starting to get quite hot stood here and if I worked it I'd have to keep getting hot another log to keep it filled and they talk about these kitchens being a veritable hell the guys sat here are just sweating buckets the heat from this fire and the five others are radiating out into the room so it is like being in a furnace now we know that you're allowed to drink quite a lot of beer here at Hampton Court just an ordinary worker got one gallon a day as his allowance but working by the fires is even better there is no limit to the beer you can ask Hamilton courts bar tab included six hundred thousand gallons of beer a year ten thousand gallons and more a week the revelry at the palace new fuel limits and Henry led the festivities from the front contrary to his popular image today young King Henry was a handsome and dashing figure at the beginning of his reign he was eighteen years old and he was exceptionally good-looking he was six foot two when the average height for a man was five foot seven and a half he was athletic he was good at everything he turned his hand to whether it was playing musical instruments whether it was surpassing all the archers of his guard archery or as a capital horseman and he was also said to be very warm very generous very charismatic Henri's friends were like-minded young men courtiers that could match him for energy and enthusiasm in Henry the eighth's day it would have been a place of great fun and I think we can understand this best by realizing how young most of the men at court were there in their late teens they're in their early 20s their boisterous they're having fun and so the court was actually like taking a load of teenagers traveling around the country it would have been a place of noise and luteus Hampton Court Palace became the ultimate royal playground this is the palaces 16th century tennis court one of the oldest sporting venues in the world part of a leisure complex designed to entertain the young king and his courtiers there's been a court here for 600 years in fact some of the walls were the ones that Henry will have hit a ball against it's like a living museum real tennis is the modern name for the antiquated form of the sport one of its most avid fans is author and historian roman krishna ric acuter x this is a vigorous society was full of passion and tennis was actually part of that passionate way of living I mean this is where court life was happening it wasn't just listening to you know music madrigals over in the palace of few hundred yards away I mean this is where the real exciting stuff was happening you can imagine on a court like this you wouldn't just had people playing but in the galleries surrounding behind the netting there would have been people watching the game gambling on the game everybody betting money bringing up their purses losing fortunes left right and center visiting Cardinals from France young princes from Spain wanting to get on court with Henry and in fact in 1519 the Venetian ambassador spotted Henry playing and made this remark that it is the prettiest thing in the world to watch the King play at tennis to see his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture he's more handsome than the King of France he looked really good on court he was a great athlete he could whack the ball harder than anybody else during his age he could reach into the corners he could move like a cat so I was no wonder Henry actually won most of his matches at least that's what the record showed but would you really have wanted to go face-to-face with Henry you know what kind of temper he had if you beat him in a game well it could be pretty dangerous for your livelihood but sport could not satisfy Henry's competitive streak completely the King wanted victory on the battlefield 3 epic paintings on the wall of the palaces Tudor apartments tell the story of henry's quest to prove himself on the international stage these priceless pieces more than 400 years old were commissioned by Henry the 8th himself this painting celebrates Henry's first significant military engagement the Battle of the Spurs according to art historian Linda Collins it's little more than Hampton Court propaganda there were 30,000 troops assembled by Cardinal Wolsey to be in this battle as the French troops rode in what they didn't expect to find was a large number of English troops it took them off their guard and so they turned and they rode away chased by the English and it's called the Battle of the Spurs because as the French troops turned and ran their Spurs glinted in the sunshine and it was said that they used their Spurs more than their swords well here we have Henry on his white horse in the center of the battle and you're talking maybe sitting duck here you're on a white horse in the middle of the battlefield so Henry's advisers would not have allowed him onto the frontline so this is artistic license Henry's warrior ambitions were ultimately frustrated but the next two paintings in the series show you learn to project kingly power in another way outrageous and ostentatious wealth embarking for a peace conference in France Henry's fleet of ships is packed with jewels tapestries and livestock the event was so opulent it became known as the field of the cloth of gold the tents were made of gold cloth everything was gilded it was a spectacular event and this time he can use a white horse this is a glorious procession six thousand men erected this huge temporary palace Henry's decadent Hampton Court on the road we've got this spectacular Palace which was actually created on the field for the royal family to live in during this event outside this palace we have these two fountains this one has been recreated at Hampton Court Palace and these fountains should not have water in them they should have red wine they can drink as much red wine as they want and they certainly did and you do find these men here who look as though they have either thrown up or are about to throw up excessive consumption and luxury defined Henry the eighth at the heart of Hampton Court they came together in a heady mix the palaces Great Hall was the place to see and be seen this is the Great Hall at Hampton Court isn't it magnificent it would have looked so much more magnificent though at the time it was first built because it would have had green and white tiles on the floor here and on the ceiling all this incredible Hamel being ceiling would have been even more gold and blue and red than it actually is now so you come in here and you've got this assault on your senses is an incredible mass of color surrounding you and of course what would have been going on in here would have been lots and lots of fun and festivities the 60-foot high vaulted room was far more than just a royal dance hall it was a unique token of love from Henry to his second wife Anne Boleyn Hemme spent three years rebuilding the Great Hall - amber Lynn's honor so there are carvings of her arms with Henry it's got a chant a with lovers knots and so on as one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting Ann Berlin had made a big impression at court after 20 years of marriage Henry and Catherine had failed to have a son and the Kings I had started to strain Anne Boleyn was the woman who was known as the great Whore Henry absolutely a daughter I think it was love at first sight we think of ambolyn as being this really attractive woman in fact she probably wasn't she's described by a friend as being good-looking enough and that's a friend so she obviously wasn't that much of a looker but she was cosmopolitan she was witty and she was fun to be around she was a graceful dancer and Henry found her company enchanting and played Henry well refusing to become his mistress she would only enter his bed as queen frustrated and lovestruck Henry wanted a divorce but divorcing a queen was no small matter igniting the fury of Catherine's influential Spanish family any annulment would have to come from the Pope himself the King knew who to turn to Cardinal Wolsey was given the unenviable task of striking a deal with Rome one thing that this amazing man couldn't achieve in the end was to get Henry his divorce his annulment of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon that Henry so desperately wanted the Pope refused the divorce Henry lost patience and dismissed Wolsey even though the Cardinal had given him Hampton Court in a desperate attempt to appease him the King now had sole control of the palace say Wolsey comes to a bad end he falls from power Henry takes his palace Wolsey dies in disgrace just before he can be executed probably the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court this glorious as urine gold roof was added by Hemi v8 under the Kings guidance the palace became the birthplace of a Christian denomination that would shape history just downstairs from this office in the council-chamber henry date was in council one day and he said right the pope won't give me the divorce I want from Catherine of Aragon so that I can marry Anne Boleyn I'm getting rid of the Catholics and setting up the Church of England in 1533 within the walls of Hampton Court the king did the unthinkable he broke from the Roman Catholic Church and anointed himself head of the new Church of England with the Pope out of the way Henry could finally marry Ann after seven years of waiting their marriage triggered raucous merriment of the palace plays and dances run late into the night the king himself would have been in here and they would have been dancing he himself would like to dance very much we have accounts saying that he lept like a stag he had to find calves of which he was very proud the Queen would invite up to a hundred women from noble families to join the revelry it was the place for Tudor ladies to be seen in all their finery as demonstrated by Hampton Court guide and lecturer Siobhan Clarke a young lady is lucky enough to be offered a position at court would need to be suitably dressed to provide an ornament to this magnificent Court so we're just going to put on the four sleeves here which you can see actually match my kurtal but they're a separate piece altogether which get tied on with a ribbon onto my french game a Tudor lady might wear up to five layers of clothing we know that the climate was much colder in the mid 16th century and the palaces right by the river it could be cold and drafty a word about corsets because people always think that like the Victorians that it's going to be really really tiny waist in fact the Tudors didn't try to achieve those tiny waists it was actually fashionable to be a little bit plump a lady at this time would have very long hair and Berlin had hair so long you could sit on it and it's really important to cover your hair and if you go about with your head uncovered you really considered immoral a loose woman now the reason that this French hood was considered daring and rather racy is that it's going to leave the front part of my hair uncovered everything at Hampton Court was about display while Ann made an impression with her daring fashion Henry's shown at the jumps he commissioned adjusting complex to be built at the palace these gardens and walls were the arena or tiltyard once stood when Henry was barely out of shorts even if they were cloth-of-gold ones he really concentrated on building things which entertained him and the tilt the joust the tournament that was his favorite thing of all he saw himself as his great gallant Knightly King so ladies of the court would be positioned at windows and the Knights outside including the king would chase up and down either side of a barrier and try and either snap their lances or knock each other off horses and the lady's heart would be a flutter as they like Rapunzel lent out the window Henry invested extravagantly in tournaments and elaborate suits of armor historian Mark Griffin works with a totally accurate replica of one of his suits your armor says a lot about your aesthetic style what you like how much you can afford it can be decorated it could be engraved embossed gold could be added silver could be added some of the French Kings even had jewels set into their helmets that they would then pluck out and throw at the audience after they'd finished jousting just to prove how rich they are but beneath the pomp and ceremony there was real danger Henry's taking an enormous risk taking part in this sport men were very seriously wounded they had bits of splinters of wood going into the eyes blinding them you could you could be cut in the under the arm in the groin they could bleed to death there's no way anybody in the medieval or early Tudor world who could do anything about those sorts of injuries in 1536 the risk of the tournament finally caught up with Henry a brutal fall was to change the course of English history he's not from his horse the horse rolls over him the horses armored he's basically crushed underneath half a ton of animal and steel he's he's knocked unconscious for two hours he's very badly injured and around that time and the Lin who is watching has a miscarriage which of course has amazing consequences not only for her but for the kingdom as a whole the accident changed the King forever some believe Henry the eighth's injury twisted him into an ill-tempered time he opened up an ulcer in his leg that would never heal and would give him constant and debilitating pain for the rest of his life so the first place to look for his temperamental change is the fact that he's in constant pain but also it's possible that he bruised his cerebral cortex when he fell the cumulative effect is to change him into a very different man capricious irascible people didn't know what had an gird him but suddenly he would turn on a dime and then being a completely different person and so by that time I think it must have been nightmarish to be at his court high in the roof of the Great Hall colorful faces peer down on the room below they are a warning of the deadly consequences to come hanging from the wooden eaves these little figures inspired the name eavesdropper if you go in the Great Hall today you'll see these eavesdroppers who the architect had actually built into the ceiling their little figures who are looking down on the courtiers below and it's almost a warning to those courtiers to say look everything is overheard here there was gossip there was intrigue there was plotting for advancement to court an is becoming a victim of the court she loved so much jealous factions start to spread stories of infidelity and incest what's more an has not produced a male heir and she's quarreling with the king looking to escape from the marriage Henri seizes on the rumours in 1536 and is arrested she had one day where she was celebrating jousting May Day celebrations with Henry then he left were in a bit of a hurry and there was much muttering about his according to one of the sources in the next morning out of nowhere her reign as Queen comes to an end and faces charges of adultery incest and treason the river flowing past Hampton Court transports her to the Tower of London executioner's were trained in hanging people not in cutting off heads we have accounts of someone like Margaret Poe and she was executed in 1541 the first blow gashed her shoulder and it took ten further blows to separate her head from her neck but Henry took pity on amberlynn when it came to her death he ordered an expert French executioner to be brought all the way over from France in order that she might be beheaded with a sword cleanly in one blow with an barely cold in her grave Henry wipes all trace of her from Hampton Court in their haste the workmen miss one of her symbols in the woodwork it's still there today a secret memorial to an when she is executed Henry marries Jane Seymour and so the hall has to start all over again poor galleon hone who did the glass he must have been packing his tools up but then someone said why galleon you know it's just happened only I know not another eight months because that's how long it took so hampton court ends up being this continual building site for a whole sequence of wives and Henry never really gets around to finishing it next to the Great Hall is the great watching chamber this fine room was where courtiers would wait to see their monarch Henry built it in honor of his new love and wife Jane Seymour Henry the eighth's would have walked through here he would have processed through here on Sundays and holy days an extraordinary finery and people would be trying to petition him they'd been waiting all this time to see him so I've been trying to pull at his arm trying to get his attention if you look at the ceiling you can have a sense of how much he must have lavished on it because this is incredible beautiful gilt and these badges are leather matches and this is Jane Seymour's badge that's a castle with roses a rosebush coming out of it and a phoenix rising from the top and of course the phoenix rising from the ashes is exactly what Jane Seymour did for Henry the eighth's because she provided him with a son and an heir and so it's no surprise that he would build something so sumptuous in her honor to celebrate Henry hung a series of extravagant new tapestries less than a year into their marriage Jane Seymour had provided him with the son he desperately wanted Henry the 8th commissioned the tapestries that you can see here the Abraham tapestries he paid a vast amount of money from two thousand pounds at the time that was the cost of a warship so these were really expensive and the other thing about them is that they would have been utterly splendid because they were made with cloth of gold their vibrancy has faded over 500 years but modern pigment analysis can bring their 16th century colors back to life the tapestries would have been practically neon they were so bright Oh me with spirals of real gold with silk thread going through them and they would have glinted and glimmered in the light they would have looked absolutely beautiful but this marriage too had a sad end it's believed Jane Seymour's heart and lungs are in a lead box hidden behind the chapel altar Jane died from childbirth complications soon after Prince Edward was born in Henry's memory he will look back in years to come with great sentiment he will weep and say that you know she was the best of his wives he had been unfortunate in love with ill-conditioned wives except for Jane I think actually there's an element of that that says wool perhaps she didn't live long enough for him to have fallen out of love with her actually wracked by grief life is now on a downward slope for the previously young and sporty King Henry's leg injury makes him almost immobile Grosse obesity creeps up on him not helped by his decision to quadruple the size of the palace kitchens by the 1540s the near sedentary King is comfort eating and he weighs over 400 pounds food historian mark Melton bill has unearthed a recipe for the artery-clogging food that Henry was served at the palace when he was a young man he ate a lot he's given all these dishes at every meal when he's an older man I'm afraid he doesn't do quite so much sport but he eats the same and so we get the bigger and bigger and bigger Henry they becomes famous for so big that his last suit of armor is 54 inch waist that's a big guy if we went for a feast at Henry the 8th Palace at Hampton Court we might be given is something called Lombard custard it contains bone marrow so it's got sugar and it's got cream in it it's also got the inside of beef bones it just gives a really rich buttery taste and rich tastes just say everything about the court of Henry the 8th and there we go a custard tart let's get a little try this could've been eaten it actually is beefy very mildly beefy and sweet been worse on the wall of the palaces processional gallery hangs a full-length painting of Abby's Henry the eighth the classic piece was inspired by the Kings brilliant Court painter Hans Holbein the genius of Holbein has immortalized Henry as one of history's most imposing figures whole by his paintings of Harry the eight have lasted and it's probably true to say that there may have been an element of propaganda in them he is sturdy strong and magnificent what Holbein is done for Henry is to give him substance when Henry needed a portrait painted of a foreign princess Holbein was the obvious choice to protect an image of virility the King needed a queen but Henry's royal matchmakers were not having an easy time famously one of their foreign Brides who was proposed as his future wife said I would marry him if I had two heads and then I'd got one to spare you know and you can see why she'd have made that remark he was terrifying he had this formidable reputation I'll then return with Anna please portrait and Henry liked what he saw the beautiful German princess was invited to England to become his fourth wife and Queen their blind date was a disaster he arrived early in disguise and the whole game of court was that you were supposed to pretend both that Henry looked like all the other young good-looking men that he was around even though by this point he had run too fat in quite a great way and also that true lovers would recognize each other so she was supposed to see through his disguise and recognize the regal King she did neither of those things so this man approaches her tries to kiss her and she's thinking this is just a terrible breach of etiquette she tries to ignore this terrible man pouring at her so Henry by this time is completely put off so when it comes to consummating their relationship he says that she is smelly that she is fat and that she is not a maid she's not a virgin and obviously there is somebody in the room who is smelly and fat and not a virgin but it's not an of Cleves wedding plans were too advanced to be canceled but the relationship was going nowhere within months the unhappy couple agreed to put right their mistake she gave him the divorce willingly and as a result she got thirty thousand pounds a year five palaces she was welcomed at court she was known as the King's sister and she became really one of the most important ladies in England so it was an example of history how to deal with Henry give him what he wanted undeterred Henry was soon back honeymooning at Hampton Court with Catherine Howard wife number five beautiful but naive catherine was powerless to resist the Kings advances of course she was a teenager when she married the aging Henry the eighth so it certainly wasn't the love match for her but Henry the eighth couldn't keep his hands off Catherine Howard he adored her he was always sort of petting her in public and he was devastated I think he was genuinely heartbroken when one of his ministers dared whisper to him that his young wife had been unfaithful and they presented irrefutable proof of Catherine's infidelity one morning Henry entered the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court to find a letter detailing Catherine's liaisons with other men she was confined to her room and in the great watching chamber it was announced that she was sentenced to death legend has it that Catherine broke free and ran down the processional chamber screaming for mercy a protests were in vain she could not reach the king Catherine Howard have been taken up the river to the tower and she would have passed underneath the heads of her lover's which were on spikes they've been beheaded their heads parboiled and tarred and put their and she would have seen that grisly sight as she went to her certain death the night before she was executed the accounts say that she experimented with putting her head on that block rehearsed that moment when she would go to her death at 9:00 the following morning 5 wives down henry locks himself away in his rooms at hampton court for days on end he starts mixing homemade remedies from the palace herb garden to try and cure the wound on his festering leg after Katherine Howard was executed Henry really goes on a bit of a downer and after this he suffers appeared a depression in 1541 and is confined at Hampton Court five years later he being he restores some of his vicar and he marries again Catherine Parr it's a very good wife for his last few years but at that point Henry is no longer the man he once was and so by the end of his life he really you know he's not terribly old he's only 56 when he dies he is frail and his obesity has warned him down married in the palace chapel catherine parr henry sixth and last wife nurses him through his final days you in 1547 the massively obese Henry the Eighth dies after his reign a succession of monarchs changed little at Hampton Court eventually it slipped into neglect but there was life in the palace yet after a century and a half in decline Hampton Court blossomed once again as the epicenter of royal life this was the result in 1689 William the third and Mary ii became king and queen of england the royal couple immediately set their sights on Hampton Court Palace when William and Mary came to the throne in 1688 top of their list was building a really grand new palace and they got into Christopher Wren wanted to rebuild Hampton Court he made plans for knocking down practically all of it but William and Mary the palace itself was now unpardonably old-fashioned and not at all like the regular buildings that the French monarchy were putting up at places like Versailles REM the celebrated architect of sin Paul's Cathedral in London drew up a grand barak design in the style of the Palace of Versailles near Paris but money was tight for the time being Ren had to be content with rebuilding only half the palace Henry the eighth's Royal Apartments were replaced with vast new staircases and staterooms the point of Hampton Court and in fact the point of any palace at all is to really intimidate the pants off anybody who's coming to the place it's not supposed to be warm and welcoming and easygoing this is about the king every outer room contains a throne courtiers were expected to bow even when it was empty William the third lived much of his life on display the King was notoriously prone to ill health the public appearances were designed to prove he was alive and well this is king william the Third's privates dining room this is where William would enjoy meals with his closest friends but the King didn't always get to eat alone or in private with his intimates William would often have to indulge in the bizarre ritual of the Kings dining in public he would sit alone at a table with a huge elaborate feast laid out before him a paying invited audience gathered behind a rope intently watching the Kings every move every morsel going into his mouth at the end of it he would retire leaving the hugely expensive sugar sweetmeats on the table the audience would then descend upon them breaking them up and taking home pieces just as we might with wedding cake today only deep within the palace could William escape from prying eyes the rooms at first floor are actually pretty much a sham and the King used downstairs he really lived below the shop first floor was for display for decorum downstairs is where he did his writing had his library at most of his meals sulked did all the things that humans really do when they're not acting King all palaces work like a chain so you get your bigger grander more impressive outer rooms and then the rooms get smaller as you go in it's like a filter if you like lots of people out here very few people in the middle here and it gets more and more exclusive as you penetrate a special few shared the inner sanctum with him this is William the thirds royal laboratory chamber the odor from the 300 year old velvet seated box still hangs in the air the king himself has people to attend him even when he's on the toilet he has a top servant he's called the groom of the stool you actually hands him the claw fees is to wipe his bottom and nobody thinks this is weird and in fact everybody wants to be the groom of the stool because it's a great chance to ask the King for favors some courtiers were certainly more favored than others an exquisite mural sprawls across the ceiling above William the thirds bedchamber painted by classical Italian artists nude male figures drape over one another King William had a selection of male favorites to whom he was extremely close jealous courtiers made a scandalous connection with the fresco above his bed people in the past have looked at that and thought wow that's hope my robotic and then people have looked at these scholars pamphlets saying that he was an unperformed pune prick for example and they put the two things together malicious gossip spread that William was a homosexual rumors fed by a lack of children from his marriage Palmieri couldn't have children and people started attacking the pair of them saying whoa what's going on here perhaps William is more interested in men than he is in women and it was it was a weakness that the the satirist sand the caricaturist succeed then in 1694 queen mary died suddenly from smallpox William had to live in the New Hampton Court alone a few years later he fell from his horse whilst riding in the grounds of the palace William died from his injuries he left his Hampton Court rebuild only half complete at large parts of Henry the eighth's palace still intact creating the unique fusion of architecture we see today they intended to pull down the lot and just leave the Great Hall standing they liked that bit I thought that's quite good and curiously this wonderful gothic confection of the Great Hall would have sat in between two massive classical blocks but happily William the third ended up only building half of what he intended which means that we have this wonderful fusion of two very different ages which is a surprise to many visitors who arrive expecting this Tudor world all of a sudden they're plunged a century and a half ahead only 12 years after William the house of Stewart's royal dynasty came to an end in 1714 the Georgian era began and Hampton Court exploded into life once again king george ii and his wife Caroline had grand plans for the palace they used the landscaped gardens to throw extravagant parties the couple would create huge flotillas for the long water and celebrate with thousands of courtiers inside the house the formidable Queen Caroline commissioned an entire wing of plush new apartments if you look at Caroline's rooms in Hampton Court you can see little bits of her character creeping through and she actually played a lot of cards she introduced a lot of gambling into the Georgian court and she also was quite progressive in things like her bathing she wanted to be clean she wanted things to look nice and smell nice it was surprising for the Georgians that she liked to bathe so much because they thought it was dangerous to their health and they were actually fascinated by it but private bathing could be difficult even for a queen there were no corridors in the Georgian apartments so servants would frequently pass through rooms she was constantly under the eye of servants so I think she really wanted some places where she could retreat and be alone with George it's shown in her bedroom where she has locks on the door that she can actually pull all the way from the bed so quite quickly just to keep someone out of the room unusually for royalty at the time George and Caroline were close but they hated their eldest son Frederick Prince of Wales and treated him with contempt and suspicion it says that the Hanoverians the Georgian Kings were like pigs they devoured their young and it's it's true really we see throughout the 18th century all the Georgian kings being really really horrible to their heirs george ii and Caroline described Frederick the greatest asked the greatest liar in the greatest beast in nature and they wished him dead for Frederick the feud with his parents had poisoned Hampton Court the prince was forced to stay at the palace with his heavily pregnant wife augustow one night on a back staircase he took his revenge Frederick was determined that the birth of his child should not happen under his parents roof here at Hampton Court Palace he was determined to escape from his mother's eagle-eye august's labor started now Frederick didn't call for the Midwife he called for the carriage he'd met his wife whose waters had now broke and she was soldered onto a staircase one of the many back staircases here at the palace and led her down it's step by step all the time stuffing handkerchiefs August's petticoat to stop any signs left behind them of her labor well they got her to the bottom of the stairs eventually she was bundled into a carriage and a way to London to give birth George and Caroline were naturally fear it's George blamed Caroline she blamed everybody else this is a big deal because people worry that if a baby dies or miscarries then an impostor will be slipped in and the line of the succession will be will be altered Frederick's baby daughter was delivered safely at Hampton Court was scarred by bitter memories for the palace centuries of royal occupation were coming to an unhappy end George took a mistress and Caroline to eating towards the end of her life Queen Caroline's existence at Hampton Court was quite sad she was aware that she'd lost the love of her husband who'd adored her she was plagued by ill health she was over fond of chocolate and had become enormous Lee fat she could barely walk and spend much of her time confined to her chambers at Hampton Court George and Caroline was succeeded by their grandson George the third the king who infamously lost the American colonies mindful of his family history George the third hated Hampton Court and refused to stay there no monarch ever lived at the palace again in 1838 Hampton Court was open for public enjoyment and a new chapter in its history began tourists now take photos where royal lovers once plotted adulterous liaisons the palace stands today as a gateway to the past Hampton Court is the most extraordinary building because it survives like no other Palace of that period you can share the space the tudor courtiers and queens and kings want new still our imagination walks those halls that's why the building has a rapport with us because you feel like you're occupying this space between the past or present next time on secrets of all thought the Spencer's explore a grand house displaying the wealth and power of one of Britain's preeminent aristocratic dynasties 19 generations of Spencer's have lived in this house over more than 500 years it was the childhood home of Diana Princess of Wales I remember my sister Donna tap-dancing in the main entrance hall and now it is her final resting place we still get people coming with flowers and laying them where the princess is buried all Thorpe was the scene of the secret wedding of two star-crossed lovers and a battleground in a long standing fued between an earl and of duchess she was a difficult woman she didn't like people and she fell out with everyone and she never forgave over five centuries every English monarch has passed through its doors to be greeted by great finery and immeasurable treasures one of my ancestors was obsessed with birds he had 43,000 first editions including three of Shakespeare's original folios a house that boasts a connection to the first President of the United States George Washington in the churchyard you'll see Washington tombs and in the aisle of the church we lift up a wooden shield underneath is the Washington star their coat of arms uncover these remarkable tales in secret of awful dispensers to learn more about this program visit pbs.org this episode is available on DVD to order visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS you

Info

Channel: Henry Harold

Views: 1,782,935

Rating: 4.678678 out of 5

Keywords: Hampton Court Palace (Olympic Venue), England, History Documentary, Tudors

Id: vgQ_JGFbufM

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 55min 42sec (3342 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2013

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