Prince Edward Examines The Royal History Of St Paul's Cathedral | Crown & Country | Real Royalty

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] this is the city of London's Cathedral yet it is such a famous and much loved building but it holds a special place in the hearts of all londoners [Music] thank you the Dome is the cathedral's most famous feature under which countless services and events of national importance have been held it is also a symbol of defiance surviving the Dreadful fires with the Blitz in 1940 which destroyed so much of this part of London its survival was a unique episode in the story of this building because fire was responsible for destroying the four previous churches on the site and involving the crown in the rebuilding of the present magnificent Saint Paul's Cathedral [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] the night of the 8th of September 1940 was to Mark the start of events that changed the face of London the 76 consecutive nights except November the 2nd when bad weather granted the luftwaffe London was attacked like no City before particularly vulnerable because the River Thames acted as an inextinguishable navigation Beacon and amongst the fire and Rubble the great Dome of Saint Paul stood out as a symbol of Hope and survival like a great ship lifting above the smoke and Flame prime minister Winston Churchill sends a message to the Lord man saying that the cathedral must be saved at all costs a large group of volunteers men and women from all walks of life and occupations joined forces to make up Saint Paul's watch we were all stationed in the Crypt when we arrived and we were told where we would be where we would go for our watch for that night which might be anywhere in some of the roof spaces it might be on the on the galleries outside um and there was one very very high up and just below the the great um Stone Tower which we were told if it fell on us where there wasn't a hope there's a more prominent building than it is today because it wasn't surrounded by so many tall buildings I'm sure that the effect that there's some force was saved from major catastrophe was a great symbol to the people and they weren't so much concern with all the little buildings around but it was the the retention and safety of the cathedral um that was very important to the people I'm sure that London during the war the Magnificent bells of the cathedral remained silent they only rang again on the 24th of August 1944 when Paris was liberated it seems that it is not just a cathedral which has a strong resonance with the citizens of London the signs of the presence in Paul's has long been a popular and obviously special place in fact this is the fifth Cathedral to be built on the site and dedicated to the patron saint of the city history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we've got unrivaled access to the world's leading historians with hundreds of documentaries featuring everything from Boudicca to the British royal family we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts as you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and real royalty fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use code real royalty at checkout there are all sorts of myths and legends surrounding the choice of location of the church perhaps the most fantastic story to be connected with this site was recorded by a 10th Century cleric Jeffrey of Monmouth according to him Saint Paul's with the site on which bladdered the ancient founder of bath and sometime rule of Britain crash-landed a magic flying Stone no one knows the real reasons but the First Cathedral is recorded as being built in 604 A.D but was burnt down the Vikings destroyed the second in 962 and the third Saxon building was also consumed by far it was left to the Normans to rebuild they wanted to have a building which reflected the importance of their newly conquered Kingdom it was built a stone from Kong and became the largest building in England the policy of William conqueror when he arrived in England was to set up places of strength all around the country but he will build castles and he built Cathedrals the tower and Spa of the original Norman Cathedral were the highest in the world apart from the city of um in Germany it was a very expensive place it was quite magnificent it took a long time to build but when it was finished it was one of the great sites of London the knave was probably built fairly slowly and the names and most Cathedrals and in some Parish churches were places of meeting I'll see you in the neighbor some Falls rather than see you under the clock and um they did of course then degenerate to to Trading it became a shortcut down to the river and they drove their cattle and they bought their dogs the terrible smell they even said it was a certain amount of soliciting going on in the Navy the knave is effectively a public place so for centuries Services were conducted in the choir against the background of tradesmen's babbled and chatter even still activity became so boisterous that in 1385 ball games were banned from here Old St Paul's was also the setting for other public events St Paul's cross the Speaker's Corner of medieval London was the site where impromptu sermons were preached and political grievances debated it was also where the folk moot would be held this was a general assembly of citizens to pass on information it was also to be the place of penance torture and execution the gunpowder plotters were hanged drawn and quartered within the Shadow the cathedral's Great West doors on June the 4th 1561 fire was yet again to have a drastic effect on the cathedral During a severe thunderstorm over London the Magnificent Spire was struck by lightning sat on far and burnt down it marked the start of the gradual decline of Old Saint Paul's but despite its poor repair the cathedral maintained its Central role in the lives of londoners this is largely due to the influence of the bishop of London who has his throne or Cathedral at Saint Paul's the bishop is third in the church hierarchy after the archbishops of Canterbury and York and therefore has always had a close link with a sovereign throughout history [Music] obviously being in the capital city Bishops were found useful as Royal servants in various capacities they were diplomats not to put to find a point on it sometimes they were the Medieval equivalent of MI5 and when Charles the first in 1649 came to the block my predecessor Bishop Jackson was allowed to accompany him uh in his last days and his last hours and the bishop was there on the scaffold outside the Whitehall banqueting chamber and he received the king's last words the king said to him as he was about to be executed remember [Music] after the execution Parliament wanted to know the significance of the king's remarks to duxton and demanded an explanation the bishop replied that the king knew he was a little absent-minded and was reminding him to give his George to the Prince of Wales the George which is attached to the order of the Garter sash is thought to have been taken into Exile by James II it passed through the Stuart line to Bonnie Prince Charlie's brother Henry Cardinal York he then sold it to the Duke of Wellington's family where it remains to this day the Archbishop of Canterbury who had been Jackson's predecessor as Bishop of London Bishop Lord he had his head chopped off in 1645 having courageously uh defended himself before parliament against all charges of treason and it's an enormous tribute to the legal tradition of this country that friendless alone 70 conducting his own defense he defeated the prosecution for treason and they they couldn't find him guilty as charged however they were determined to kill him so they just passed an act of parliament saying that Lord would be beheaded another 17th century Bishop Henry Compton fared better and escaped execution after the Civil War however he is noted as the last Bishop to Don armor Bishop Compton was also in charge of the churches in the American colonies however he grew bored of letters about church life there so he asked him to send seeds and cuttings instead which he then planted in The Gardens of Fulham Palace and some of the descendants of those early American Imports are still growing here today from the 11th century onwards Fulham Palace has been the out of City residence for the Bishops of London and for most of that time has been a Rural Retreat from the Hurley Valley of Saint Paul's the name Fulham is derived from Fuller's settlement which is thought of being on the band in the river behind me the Bishops would have enjoyed a very different life here as the area surrounding the palace was largely rural up until the 19th century when industry grew up along the bank the bishop had jurisdiction over many aspects of Fulham life one of which was the leasing of ferryman to take people across the river from Fulham to Putney as there was no Bridge until 1729 Boats were the only means of getting across the earliest record of payment for this was in 1210 when one penny was charged just over 60 years later Robert the ferryman of Putney was paid four Shillings for taking the Royal household of Edward the first across the river it might seem a healthy sum for that time but Robert only had two barges and it took him two days to complete the job such was the size of King Edward's retinue [Music] Bishop's Park which stretches along the banks of the river was given to the public by Bishop Jackson early in the 19th century there is another listed building in Fulham adjacent to The Bishop's Park Craven Cottage was acquired in 1896 by Fulham Football Club and although fortunes for the club have fluctuated wildly over the last century it has at least managed to keep the cottage plans are now foot to relocate the building into Bishop's Park when the now successful Club rebuild their Stadium the original Palace at Fulham was built within a deep trough which at one point was a moat the oldest remaining part of the building now is 16th century the courtyard would have been where Queen Elizabeth the first was greeted when she visited the bishop in the later years of her life on one such visit in 1600 thieves broke into the palace and stole the Queen's silver Sultan much to the acute embarrassment of the bishop meanwhiles and poles was falling into a long and steady decline that reached its depth in the Civil War by the restoration the cathedral was a poor shadow of its former self the slow deterioration which had started with a bolt of lightning in 1561 was brought to a dramatic climax on the night of 4th of September 1666 when Flames which had ravaged four-fifths of the city of London engulfed the old Cathedral [Music] what was to be called the most destructive far that England had ever seen started on the night of September the 1st in a Bakehouse in Pudding Lane While most of London was still sleeping the fire that was to devastate so much of the city was Quack and smoldering absolutely cheap by Zhao pact tight land incredibly valuable people building on it in every possible opportunity so the houses were packed close together and of course they were all made of wood and the summer of 1666 was a very very hot summer um and by the time September came London was a vast overcrowded Tinderbox an unfortunate Baker um called Thomas Farina um one evening presumably raked out the ashes out of his oven rather carelessly and didn't check to see that all the Embers were actually dead and his house caught fire really more or less in the middle of the night you've got to remember that their firefighting kit was absolutely hopeless I mean just unbelievably hopeless I got one or two things here these are all genuine objects from the 17th century this is a fireman's helmet which actually does look quite effective but when you take into account what they used with it this bucket which is I don't know what was in there half a gallon and completely hopeless and this thing which is um rather interesting he called a squirt and what it is it's a fireman's hose but I don't know how much that took perhaps half a gallon too so you can imagine that when the place went up in Flames there was very very little they could do these pathetic tools were thrown against it and the fire got worse and worse the king and the Duke of York were both involved in fighting The Blaze the Royal Brothers organized bucket chains and all of the demolition of houses handing out bags of guineas to anyone who helped them the fact that any sort of organized effort was made to save the city at all was largely due to the king Farr burnt itself out on September the 6th the city was a black and ruined not only had some pools been raised to the ground but so had the role exchange the Guild Hall Newgate jail Bridewell the customs house 13 200 houses 87 Parish churches six chapels 52 Livery companies three City Gates and four stone Bridges and all it was estimated that 10 million pounds worth of damage to buildings and goods had been done when the annual income of the city was estimated at a mere 12 000. for days after the fire the ground still smoldered and was hot enough to Scorch the feet the king had the task of riding outside the city walls where many londoners were encamped to allay their fears about being attacked by the Dutch or the French and ultimately to lead them back into the city rumors were spreading that the fire had been started deliberately early in April of that year papists had been arrested who were plotting to burn down the city they had planned the fire for the 3rd of September as they claimed the stars who predicted a major disaster for that day ironically nature was to do the job for them the monument was erected as a lasting Memorial to the events of September 1666. it is 202 feet high which is the distance it stands from where the fire started when it actually came to the fire people were looking around for a scapegoat as they would these days and rather unfortunately a poor man called Mr Hubert was wandering around he was French which always helps and he was slightly delinquent and he was picked on and he confessed to to causing it and he was given a sort of show trial and hung but nobody believed it was his fault nobody believed it was his fault and really the blame finally wasn't attributed after this disaster Charles II saw the chance to create a totally new stone-built metropolis and set up a commission to look into the rebuilding of the city the man who came up with the most imaginative plans was better known as an astronomer but was soon to become the ages greatest architect Christopher Wren drought plans for the new capital within weeks of the fire going out he proposed streets of three different widths and radiating from a central point however such large-scale planning was unheard of in England and no one could stop londoners rebuilding on the sites of their previous homes and businesses Christopher Wren was born in the pale of the Anglican Church his father was Dean of Windsor his uncle was a bishop he knew the church well the first design that he produced was a Greek cross design now that looked very much like a continental Church a centrally planned church and didn't really meet with the approval of the authorities at all he was asked to produce a model of something that would be an auditory and the first model that we have in the trophy room here represents that stage of the design what Ren did was to obtain a royal Warren that gave him the go ahead and and attached that was what is now known as the warrant design although it is the second warrant that was essentially a compromise they wanted a Spire that looked a bit like the Spire that was there before he wanted a dome so he produced this wonderful design that I think of almost as an architectural joke now in that Royal warrant there was a wonderful let out clause that said he could make variations uh variations in what was ornamental rather than essential but like any good architect he took that absolutely to the Limit and clearly the design that he was working on encompassed a dome that was much closer to what he wanted to begin with clearing the site of the old cathedral was the first task initially they tried to use Dynamite but this caused Panic amongst the locals who thought it was an earthquake so the workers were forced to use battering rams and Brute Force during the excavations a broken slab from a tomb from the old cathedral was found with the word resurgum I shall rise again inscribed on it it was laid as the foundation stone of the new cathedral Wren also had the word carved into the exterior above the Great South door beneath the image of a Phoenix rising from the flames the choir was opened on December the 5th 1697 for the first service [Music] when the Dome was revealed londoners were in awe of its magnificence which crammed the skyline of Ren's other spas and Steeples by now Ren was an old man and was not strong enough to lay the last Stone so his son was winched to the top of the Dome to put it in its place some 36 years after his father had laid the first sadly Wren was criticized for prolonging the work because of his management as in Paul's Workman became synonymous with slowness Ren's wages were held back at one point and it was only through personally petitioning Queen Anne that he recovered all that he was owed at the end of 1711 Parliament had last declared that Saint Paul's was complete and ren retired to his Riverside House near Hampton Court 13 years later as a frail old man in 91 Christopher Wren was helped out the steps of Saint Paul's by his Coachmen nobody seemed to notice him as he sat beneath the Dome watching the sunlight on the stonework of his masterpiece having made his way slowly home he died later that same afternoon a few days later his body was brought back to the Crypt to be buried [Music] Ren's Cathedral contains a magnificent collection of rare and ancient books over two thousand were left by Bishop Compton in his will the rarest book is the first edition of tyndale's New Testament of 1526. this Bible caused a storm of controversy when it was first printed with copies publicly burned at simple's Cross the copy here is one of only three known to exist in the world [Music] they survived the Fire of London because by chance they had been removed from the city for safe keeping earlier in the century the only other survivor of the Flames was the Effigy of John Dunn a former dinosaurs and great poet of the day Renard wanted there to be no monuments in the cathedral but when one was erected to the reformist John Howard in 1795 it seemed to open the floodgates there are now nearly 300. in the Crypt which is the largest in Europe tribute is paid to many of the Great and good the armed services science arts and politics all have a place here tombs have made significance in the Crypt including one which stands beneath the central point of the great Dome this is where the body of Horatio Nelson lies within a coffin made from the Flagstar for the friendship the coffin is contained in a crowned casket which was supposedly made for Cardinal Woolsey however Henry VIII took possession of it and amazingly it remained unused until Nelson's death the funeral for this great naval hero was a state occasion but there was no Royal prisons George III wouldn't attend as he disapproved of Nelson's liaison with Lady Hamilton amongst the Grand and beautiful memorials lies a simple black marble Stone this is the burial place of Ren with a Latin inscription lacto SI monumentum recurus Kirkham speak a reader if you need a monument look around you these words seem most amped in more than one sense Saint Paul's is a memorial to this extraordinary architect in another sense Charles II ran in all his skilled Craftsmen managed to create a monument which captures the spirit and history of the site which has been at the heart of the life of londoners practically since the city began foreign [Music] for centuries my ancestors have used the River Thames as their principal form of Transport in London it was often the quickest route but more importantly it was usually the safest Henry VII would have been familiar with this route as it must have been one of his favorite Journeys for it took him to perhaps the most Splendid and Scenic of his many palaces Hampton Court but he only acquired it when one of his senior courtiers Fell From Grace [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] features of Hampton Court today is This Magnificent clock it was installed by Henry VIII in 1540 as part of his remodeling of the palace which removed all traces of its previous owner for Hampton Court was not built by Henry but by one of his most trusted friends and advisors Thomas Woolsey Woolsey was the king's right-hand man and most trusted advisor when Woolsey built Hampton Court he placed a huge set of his coat of arms here above the entrance to the Palace Henry VII made it his prime task as soon as he took control of the palace to totally remove all traces of Walters stay laborers worked by Torchlight day and night under huge canvas cloths they defaced towards his arms over the entrance and above them installed the astronomical clock [Music] the clock itself is fascinating as well as telling the hour day month and phases of the Moon it also tells a time of high tide at London Bridge another feature is on the clock face the sun revolves around the earth as the clock was designed before the discoveries of Galileo the reason for all this Tudor vandalism is quite simple within the space of six months the two men had completely fallen out Woolsey descended from being the most powerful minister in the Kingdom to being tried for treason both Hampden court and Woolsey had humble origins in the 13th century the palace had been a manner owned by the knights hospitals of Saint John of Jerusalem a succession of manahas is followed until in 1514 Thomas Woolsey bought the lease well Woolsey was an extraordinary character and it was really he almost came from nowhere he came from Ipswich where his later critics said he was the son of a butcher but his father was a an Ipswich grazia and he joined the church which was the opening for anybody who wanted to get on in those days become a Churchman um and he joined the household at an early age of Henry VII but his real break came with the accession of Henry VII he soon recognized that in Woolsey he had somebody who would take on the burden of of running essentially running the state Woolsey became indispensable for the king he became very powerful he became very rich and he incurred eventually incurred the jealousy of the king he built what was a very great house indeed a rival to anything anything the king owned Woolsey lived here in immense style and it was quite clearly a rival to anything that happened to me at any of the um any of the Courts of Europe uh he was on a courtly scale rumors of woolsey's Lifestyle prompted the king to ask him why he had built a palace that far out shot his own at nearby Richmond replied to show how Noble a place a subject may offer his sovereign these turned out to be prophetic words soon after the lease of Hampton Court was given to the king and in return the Cardinal was allowed the use of Richmond Palace in effect they shared the two will The Fallout was catastrophic but it took a long time and Henry was very reluctant even at the very end to lose the services of the minister who was quite exceptionally able and I think that the real problem began with um Anne Boleyn she bore a grudge against Woolsey and that had a very serious effect on the king's view of the minister I think his decline in a large measure can be attributed to her influence over the king trying to drive a wedge between these two individuals who previously worked very very closely together he lost Hampton Court he was deprived of various offices and he retreated to he retreated northwards to York he lived in some style in York and that was reported back to the king and by this time the King was suspicious of what will he was up to and so officers were sent North to arrest him Woolsey traveled south he got as far as Leicester he stayed in Leicester Abbey and that's in fact where he died on route back to London where almost certain he would have been tried for treason with the usual to the result thank you one problem of coping with a household of five or six hundred is ensuring an adequate supply of fresh water one of the features of woolsey's Palace was an elaborate water supply system but Henry had to extend it further after only a short stay the court would leave and not return to the Palace until it had been made hospitable again with a supply of fresh water larger amounts of people could stay for longer periods in one place woljin had already introduced a system of water conduits but Henry needed to improve on it he constructed further conduit houses at Combe three miles from here so that fresh water could flow downhill from Kingston to the Palace a hundred pounds were set aside for the construction three miles of pipes using 150 tons of lead took the water via Kingston under the Thames to Hampton Court because the conduit houses were so far from the palace they posed a security risk Henry was concerned that the water supply could be poisoned by his enemies so security measures were taken [Music] each conduit was built with extra thick walls and doors with a double locks the area surrounding was overseen by the crown and then sewn with thorns to act as a natural deterrent conduit is still in working order although it hasn't supplied water to Hampton Court since 1876 many of the original pipes still run under the houses of Kingston [Music] the system was being improved Kingston was already a busy and prosperous Market Town although it is the oldest of the three-year-old boroughs in England it was not until 1927 that King George V confirmed the title it was given in recognition of Kingston's Royal Heritage for it was here that the ancient Saxon Kings were crowned Edward the Elder was the first to be made King here in 900. the last was Ethel at the unready in 979 the coronation stone is thought to be the remains of the ancient Throne upon which they sat a silver coin from the reign of each King is set into the stone plinth it is likely that the actual coronation service would have taken place in the chapel which once stood on the site of All Saints Church then the king would be crowned in the open air for the public to see from the Tower of the church there is a great view of the river and in the 16th century the Bell ringers were paid to welcome Queen Elizabeth the first as she passed by on the River on her way to Hampton Court this also recorded that they were paid not to ring the bells when her successor James the first passed by as he was not so popular Kingston Bridge has also played an important role in The Fortunes of the town along with London Bridge it was one of the only two Bridges across the Thames from medieval times it has been rebuilt over the centuries but during the 16th century it was deliberately destroyed by the locals they were trying to prevent the passage of Sir Thomas Wyatt and his followers who were fighting to stop the marriage of Mary the first to the king of Spain in 1554. the citizens managed to stall him for several hours which helps towards Wyatt's eventual defeat a sign of gratitude Queen Mary granted the town at Charter allowing them a third fishware and an additional fare it is said that there was such an abundance of salmon that even the work has complained of being fed too much this prosperous trade is represented in the town's coat of arms along with a crown to indicate its Royal status marry his father Henry VII used Kingston bridge for his artillery train as he feared for the safety of London Bridge Under the excessive weight the king's procession also crossed here on its way to France in 1520 and the field of the cloth of gold [Music] in 1546 Henry was again entertaining French ambassadors this time Hampton Court was the venue and the palace was surrounded with gold and velvet tents for six days they housed the ambassador's retinue of 200 gentlemen and the 1 300 members of Henry's own Court [Music] this sort of event Was Not Unusual and to meet such demands the palace kitchens were immense they were divided into 19 separate departments overseeing all aspects of the royal menu 's time and in Henry the eighth time the the ceremonial center of the palace was was the Great Hall but what is interesting is that by the 1530s the emphasis on the Great Hall in general terms was was declining and Hampton Court it's something a Revival of what Henry viewed as the great medieval tradition of having a great hall and one can imagine him harking back to Henry V the great medieval Royal Heroes and having this huge peroneal peroneal Hall in the middle of his middle of his Palace um but it was there that the the lower courtiers at least dined um hundreds and hundreds of them up to 600 and sitting um up to up to twice a day during the reign of Elizabeth the First the great Halls often used as a theater featuring Sumptuous costumes and scenery ingenious lighting effects were created and on one occasion artificial snow was produced the palace was also the scene for real-life dramas several of which included Henry VII and his successive wives he spent three out of his six honeymoons here including the one with the young Anne Berlin he had their entwined initials carved throughout the palace as soon as she fell from grace these were rapidly changed to Jay for his next wife Jane Seymour the work was undertaken with great haste and many were missed so the initials of Henry and Anne still remain Inseparable to this day [Music] Jane Seymour gave Henry his much wanted sun and Heir Edward VI was christened here in the chapel with much Pomp and ceremony he was carried beneath a rich canopy in a great procession but only a few days later Jane Seymour died following complications with the birth the joyful celebrations within the palace were brought to an abrupt halt a Bible still stands open as it did in the day of Henry VII when he insisted that all visitors should be able to enter any church and read a Bible in English the book today is the authorized King James version of 1611 which was conceived at Hampton Court [Music] Henry would take mass and Delhi prayer in the holy day closet overlooking the chapel it was while in here that he chose to ignore the screens for Mercy from his fifth wife Catherine Howard it was a tragic end to what had been a promising New Beginning for the king Henry and Catherine were married in a quiet ceremony at Hampton Court but she was young and he was old she soon preferred the company rather unwisely of some of her former lovers these included Thomas Culpepper it was not long before reports were leaked to the king of Thomas being smuggled into the Queen's Apartments at first Henry would not believe it and was devastated by the news a public Declaration of the Queen's adultery was made in the great watching chamber and a Hazel was immediately dismissed the queen was arrested and held captive at the palace [Music] Catherine felt that if he could only talk to the king she would be able to persuade him of her honor and save her skin but she was forbidden from seeing him this frustration and the fear of following the same fate as her cousin Anne Berlin drove her to take desperate action familiar with the king's routine she knew when he would be in the chapel this was only a short distance from where she was being held she managed to break away from her guards and ran as fast as she could and Corridor towards the chapel doors she hammered at the door pleading with a king to let her in it stayed firmly shut the guard seized her and dragged her screaming back to her quarters the next time she left her rooms was to start her journey to the Tower and then to the block she was beheaded on the 13th of February 1542 she was just 20 years old the Eerie sound of Catherine's supposed tricks and moans have been heard so often this Corridor that it's been renamed the haunted gallery William III and Mary II were the next monarchs to change the face of Hampton Court so Christopher Wren was chosen to completely renovate the now run down to the Palace they had grandiose plans for the old place but cash flow was a problem and many of their dreams were compromised Fountain Court which replaced Henry VII's Courtyard was one of the very few aspects that was completed exactly as they had wished in many ways their past I suspect didn't quite go as far as their Ambitions they at Hampton Court what they proposed to do was demolish the entire pairs with the exception of the Great Hall and that as a nucleus for a Grand Baroque Palace was their initial intention however I'm afraid that reality struck and what we see now at Hampton Court is a reduced version of that initial intention William and Mary are the only monarchs in British history to rule as joint heads of state as the daughter of James II married to parliament's First Choice but her husband William of Orange refused to go to England unless he was given equal status with Mary William and Mary began their work on Hampton Court in 1689 five years and millions of pounds later it was still not completed then long before her rooms at the palace were finished Queen Mary died suddenly of smallpox the King was devastated by her death and all work halted for three years when work resumed again he oversaw it with attention to the smallest detail making hundreds of his own suggestions along the way the state departments are a wonderful example of the social hierarchy and psychology of the court at the time a person's status would determine how far into the sequence of rooms he or she was allowed to go this is the King's God chamber with the King actually receive anybody in this room no the king would never come into this room this was really for the hoi polloi and this is where people were weed it out all the court was allowed into this room and the series of rooms were going to run into were put together in a very definite pattern they allowed access to the king but an access that could be controlled now we're going through into the um the presence chamber here and people who would have been allowed through this doorway would have been people of quality Not only would they have to be of a certain rank which was of the nobility or they had to be Ministers of State they would also have to be properly dressed and you see here we've got a canopy and a throne but in fact the king would very rarely have been here you were very unlikely to have met him here but even when he wasn't here courtiers coming in would always bow to the throne to the empty throne now we're coming into one of the most important rooms in this Suite of rooms which is the privilege chamber now this is where you are much more likely to meet William III this whole room together with this most magnificent chandelier which is rock crystal would have just glittered and shined reflected in the mirrors and the candles it must have been absolutely superb and this is the withdrawing room and you can see there's no canopy in here the king would have sat informally on his chair of stays also the lighting is different we have sconces in here we don't have essential Chandelier all together more informal and now we're coming out of the withdrawing room and this is a different Province altogether this is the bed chamber under the department of the bed chamber which was supervised by the groom of the store a curious title because the Grimace still was the only person who was actually allowed as the title suggests into his storeroom or his lavatory so he was the most intimate member of Williams household [Music] thank you the state departments are naturally much grander in scale than the private departments which are on the ground floor and here the king would entertain his friends and family in his private dining room there were often displays of magnificent plate borrowed from the crown jewels of the Tower of London they were there to symbolize the wealth and Prestige of the king and were not actually used during the meal as well as the buildings William and Mary paid great attention to the ground surrounding the palace in fact the gardens became so well known that the king and queen were acknowledged as two of the greatest gardeners in Europe [Music] they experimented with rare and exotic plants from all around the world Mary would send collectors to the Canary Islands in Virginia to gather native samples these were then kept in specially built hot houses at the palace foreign showed his Grounds was sadly ironic this was where he was out riding when his horse stumbled on a mole hill and threw the king from his saddle he broke his collarbone and retired to Kensington Palace to convalesce he died from pneumonia three weeks later the next and last Monarch to use Hampton Court as a home was George II he added to and refurbished the palace for his Queen Caroline and also for their eight children [Music] domestic Bliss the king and queen were not fond of their eldest son Frederick Prince of Wales the queen was quoted as calling him the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest beast in the whole world the final straw came when he was expecting his first child with his third wife Augustine of sax Gotham [Music] at first Frederick tried to keep the pregnancy secret when the queen found out she insisted on being present at the birth she did not believe that her son could father a healthy child and wanted to make sure that a changeling wasn't put in its place the prince and princess was staying at Hampton Court with the king and queen when the princess went into labor Frederick dragged his poor wife out of the palace to go to St James's when the queen was told of their departure she set off in Hot Pursuit but did not arrive in time to see the child born [Music] she met with a Chile reception and returned to the king saying I hope to God I never have to see him again her wish was granted Queen Caroline died two months later without a Reconciliation after Queen Caroline's death the palace was not used as a royal home again it was divided into grace and favor apartments and there are still residents today who keep Hampton Court as a living home One Survivor of the palace's sporting Heritage is the Royal Tennis Court Royal or real tennis has been played in England since the 14th century and predates Lawn Tennis by almost 600 years Henry VII was an accomplished athlete and loved to play the game the king had the first covered Court built here in 1532 the King was a king Gambler and no game went by without some form of bet being placed on it Henry was also highly competitive and didn't like to lose so it must have been a brave or foolish person who either bet against him or Worse dared to beat him as well as money placed on ordinary games many bizarre wages were made in order to win some of the stranger bets people played on Horseback holding lighted candles and even in the nude Frederick Prince of Wales is thought to have died having been hit by a tennis ball not a lawn tennis ball as that wasn't invented until the 1870s but a real tennis ball which is solid today's Royal Tennis Club is an enduring Legacy of Henry VIII's time here remarkably each of the main Royal influences on the palace has a strong link to the present day Hampton Court is full of Echoes of its Rich history and close links with the crown whether it be tennis or ghostly screams its Gardens or the grace and favor Apartments so it's perhaps ironic that there is no trace of Thomas Woolsey the man who built it and was responsible for it becoming a royal palace thank you

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 84,602

Keywords: British Heritage, British History, British Monarchy, Court Etiquette, Crowned Heads of Europe, English Monarchy, Henry VIII, Heritage Buildings, Historical Documentaries, Historical Sites, Kingdom History, Kings and Queens, London Landmarks, Royal Legacy, Royal Palaces, Royal Residences, Royals on Screen, Royalty Life, Throne Succession, Tower Bridge

Id: h-LcJLZwFI4

Length: 47min 36sec (2856 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023