William And Mary: The Court Divided

so good evening ladies and gentlemen and uh welcome to the last in my series of lectures this year which i gave the title of theaters of revolution the architecture of disruption over the last year we have followed the first stuart king from scotland via denmark to london where he set up an extremely unusual series of royal residences you wouldn't even call them palaces in my second lecture we considered the fortunes of charles the first during the civil war and the way he set up oxford colleges and medieval castles to be royal houses in my third we looked at charles ii in exile living in the channel islands in france and in the low countries and how he managed to maintain a sense of reality and tonight we come to the final revolution of the century the so-called glorious revolution of 1688 and like my last lecture we're going to spend much of it out of england in the low countries because of course william iii was a dutchman who came to the british throne when james ii fled the country but perhaps i should take up my story tonight where i left off last time because as charles ii sailed for england to take his crown in 1616 one of those who saw him off on the keysight in skeven engine in the dungeon in the dutch republic was the nine-year-old william of orange and this is a wonderful painting here showing charles leaving the netherlands and you can just see standing by him on the keysight the diminutive figure of william of orange who at nine years old uh was to become unbeknownst to everybody the king of britain in 1660 william was a ward of the dutch state and the role of stat holder which his father had held until his sudden death in 1650 was in obeyance the standholder was not a sovereign head of state he was the first and supreme servant of the states of holland and the chief of the dutch army the house of orange nassau which william of orange became the head of while he was still in his mother's womb was a european dynasty closely related to the royal families of england france and several german princely states they had substantial private revenues of perhaps a million guilders a year from their estates in the dutch republic in france and germany and they maintained a series of magnificent residences and hosted their own populist court the ancient seat of the nassau dynasty which i show you here was at breda it was a massive square moated castle begun in the 1530s and furnished by william iii's grandfather with a great series of tapestries celebrating the members of the house of nasa by the time william's father became statholder in 1647 he favored the family residence of hanselasdike which was seven miles from the hague towards delft see a print of it here on my screen hansel stag had been refined over a long period between 1621 and 1646 as the principal summer residence for the orange court it had space for formal receptions and state events it was set in fine hunting country and it was also furnished with extensive stables its layout was heavily influenced by the palais du luxembourg and i'm going to show you here my reconstruction of its ground plan at the main block which you see at the bottom of the slide was connected to two pavilions top of the slide by galleries that made up three sides of a courtyard a colonnade in the gallery at the top of the slide close the fourth side of the courtyard on the first floor were symmetrical apartments sharing a central wall and leading to two anti-chambers in the square pavilions at each corner and the bottom right and left were the presence chambers bed chambers and closets each of them connected to the long gallery while also last dike was the closest thing william's father had to a modern residence of state he also owned two hunting lodges house turned newburgh was begun five miles east of the hague at risewick in 1630 as a private lodge without accommodation for court officials it was also designed after the french pavilion system of planning but this one as you can see from the slide was not a courtyard it was a single range and here two remote pavilions at either end of the range hopefully you can see them there were linked by galleries to a central block that contained the main rooms his other hunting lodge was at diren in gelderland on the south eastern border of the excellent hunting grounds of the velvet you see it here it's not a very good image because we don't have an image of it in william's grandfather's time the block to the right hand side is in fact built by william after he becomes king of england the bit to the left shows the original um house and in the first part of his reign as stateholder william spent as much as 10 weeks a year at dirham and hunting in the countryside far and wide in 1645 william's grandmother had begun house 10 boss which literally means house in the wood this was intended to be herder house right beside the hay this was designed by pieter post the stat holders official architect with the assistance of jakob van kampen who was the chief exponent of dutch classical architecture the house which you see a cross section of here was a square villa with a spectacular central domed hall that became a celebration of the orange family in the way that the banqueting house in whitehall celebrated the dynasty of the stewarts around the central hall and i'm going to show you my um uh reconstructed plan of it here was uh were the apartments each of them comprising an anti-room used as a presence chamber with a canopy of state in it and this led to a bed chamber with a bed of state behind a balustrade and beyond this was a private closet a smaller closet and a dressing room now in 1668 william turned 18 and his minority came to an end and he inherited his estates their income and the residences i have just shown you with the exception of house 10 boss which his grandmother was still living in and which only came to him in 1686 at the same time he entered political life starting to attend meetings of the council state as an ordinary member and i'm just showing you on the screen here a map of the dutch republic so that you can get your bearings and see exactly where williams residences actually were now while william was a rich man he was also owed considerable sums of money by the stewards who his family had loyally supported through the civil war and the english republic it was to reclaim these funds that william accepted an invitation from his uncle charles ii in 1670 to travel to england the 20 year old prince arrived at whitehall in november and was given specially fitted up lodgings in the cockpit that was the east side of the palace of whitehall he remained at the english court until the end of february 1671 being entertained in the most lavish style he visited windsor castle he went to oxford he went to cambridge he went to the races at newmarket and he was dined by the lord mayor of london and spent many jolly evenings at charles ii table on the whole he made rather a good impression although he was thought to be a little bit durer and reserved the king encouraged him one night to get drunk but william apparently couldn't hold his drink and ended up smashing the windows of the maids of honors lodgings before being escorted to his bed chamber william had no idea that his duplicitous uncle had conducted a secret treaty with france and that he would declare war on the united provinces the following year in 1672 as the english led an attack against william by sea louis xiv armies poured over the border into the spanish netherlands and pressed on towards the united provinces the dutch were hopelessly unprepared and their army collapsed like a deflating balloon in july 1672 louis xiv made a trout full entry into utrecht the slide i'm showing you here isn't actually him entering utrecht it's him uh entering maastricht um in 1673 and you see the city in the background an angel flying over louie's head holding a victor's wreath over him it's a painting by pierre minya william was now the only hope and by popular acclaim he was made captain general of the dutch army and stateholder the situation was catastrophic it was described by the english poet andrew marvel as an earthquake a hurricane and a deluge it was not only william's family name that made him first the leader and then the hero of the dutch fight back he quickly proved himself to be a talent on campaign and in the council chamber nevertheless the struggle against france would continue for the rest of his life and in some ways it became almost the reason for it peace was concluded with england in early 1674 and a few months later william bought a farmhouse house dike in the province of utrecht while this was certainly to provide new hunting grounds it was also to establish a seat in the west of the country where the oranges had little presence in 1670 william had appointed as his personal architect moritz post the 25 year old son of the former stat holders architect extended the original farmhouse adding two wings for william and a future consort the exterior was exceedingly plain and restrained but inside the house was densely decorated with contemporary paintings um here's honda kota's paintings that were in the entrance hall two incredibly grand uh still lives set in arched niches these are now in the reich's museum um and you can see uh an orange tree in the garden and the right hand uh image um obviously alluding to the house of orange and the park behind you can see is populated by all sorts of birds including peacocks and turkey as indeed the grounds actually were although william had inherited fine gardens laid out by his grandfather at sozdike he was to create his own and gardening came with hunting to be his greatest passion and sustain was his first experiment undertaken with the collaboration of hans wilhelm ben bentink his closest friend and fellow gardening fanatic the house as you see uh on my slide was flanked by two compartments containing a pair of partes each with a great statue in the middle of each parte the pates were bounded on either side orchards of dwarf fruit trees planted in rows and then great avenues thrust their way out from this inner core penetrating the parkland where his deer roamed free as well as architecture and gardening a more peaceful life caused william to think about matrimony despite england's double dealing it was clear to him that a marriage with mary stewart charles ii's niece who you see here and of course the duke of york's eldest daughter would potentially secure him the british throne meanwhile charles ii saw the benefits of marrying her to william cementing his rather shaky protestant credentials at home without he believed destroying his relationship with louis xiv france before william made his move he made detailed inquiries into what mary was actually like he had enough trouble in his life he told the english ambassador at the hague without a wife who might add to it fully satisfied with what he heard william made his way to england in october 1677 to discuss a possible marriage now he was head of state and his arrival demanded a considerable amount of expense and meticulous planning the stat holder was received by charles ii at newmarket where he was accommodated in the duke of ormond's house and furnished with a retinue of 50 english attendants who joined 40 of his own at whitehall the duke of york had vacated his lodgings at the waterside at the end of the mattered gallery in preparation for william's arrival the royal wardrobe furnished the apartments and hired in new furniture including four large tables set up to feed williams entourage twice a day mary's lodgings were in james's which you see here and it was there in her closet that her father told her that she was to marry william in a few days time they married on william's 27th birthday at nine in the evening in mary's bedroom at st james's palace and after the blessing she was undressed and taken to her bed when william was safely tucked in beside her the king drew the curtains crying now nephew to your work hey george for england and the couple were left to get to know each other william and mary arrived in holland in terrible weather after a ghastly crossing and they made straight for han solas dike which i show you on the screen here where william saw to it that mary and her ladies were escorted to her apartment what expectation the tall dark vivacious 15 year old had is not known but she was probably very pleasantly surprised by the elegant and symmetrical house with its beautiful gardens and well-ordered and compact lodgings only the year before writing to her friend and confidante francis appsley she reflected on what happiness was and she mused i quote i could live and be content with a cottage in the country and a cow a stiff petticoat and waistcoat in the summer and cloth in the winter a little garden to live upon the fruit and herbs it yields once the last night and her husband's hunting lodges may well have fulfilled that fantasy they were everything that her homes at st james's and richmond were not they were domestic they were comfortable they were modern and they were clean mary had five days to explore her new home and prepare for her formal entry into the hague this was conducted with great splendor by the states general including the obligatory triumphal arches under which mary's carriage passed crashing beneath its wheels sweeped herbs strewn by 24 young virgins she arrived at the binnenhoff which you see here in a modern photograph the official residence of the stat holder and seat of the government in english terms i suppose it was the equivalent to whitehall and westminster although it belonged to the states of holland it housed the stat holders official quarters a long range containing two suites of apartments one above each other for the stat holder and his console you can see this on my diagram here i hope quite clearly these quarters had been extended and redecorated in 1632 to four and within months of his marriage uh william had them extended again and you can see uh in the slightly darker tone williams extension on my slide the stat holders lodgings were on two floors linked by a large stair that gave access to both so if you look at my plan here i'm just going to give you a quick tour the first rooms for the guards that's room number four and after an anti-room room number five there was the so called great room number six that led to a drawing room number seven beyond this came the new rooms that william had built for himself and mary the most important of which was his state bed chamber number 10 containing an alcove for a state bed and beyond this came a small cabinet and a long gallery which is marked as number 13. at the end of this was a large room which was called in the 18th century the music room number 16. all this apart from the ceiling of mary's bed chamber has been swept away and the ceiling of her bedchamber is now in the reich's museum although william had been brought up at the bin and hoff he didn't like living there he hated the crowds of suitors and the only thing that would hold him there longer than a few days was the theater which uh he had set up in the old riding school there and engaged players from france italy and flanders to performing williams household had 13 noblemen in attendance 24 household officials 26 footmen in green livery 22 pages dressed in blue satin crimson and gold 32 man servants 27 swiss guards in blue cokes three chambermaids and 15 in the kitchens mary's household was another 40 people mainly comprising her english attendance and so in all the combined household was about 200 people small compared to the english royal household of 900 but large even for a great nobleman like all 17th century princes william was obsessed with hunting and kept a large stable and this is a wonderful illustration here of william when his king at his house head low which i'll talk about in a moment coming back from a pump surrounded by his dogs and his uh his horses um so he kept a large stable he kept packs of hounds and substantial hunting establishment although his hunting lodge at dirham was sufficient for a bachelor it was no place for a married stateholder and in 1678 william ordered that it be extended in the early 1680s william and mary spent a lot of time there um and also at solstike retreating to these houses with a very small number of people while william hunted the queen arranged her porcelain collection did needlework and attended the gardens mary seems to have been seized by the beauty of the dutch countryside and soon after arriving in holland began to build uh um gardens of her own and collect uh exotic plants at once dyke uh an orangey was built and she received um each week flowers in season for her apartments at dirham which i show you now here there'd been no garden new walks were added fountains and grottos and arbors for mary to enjoy while william was out hunting mary had an intense sense of her regality which was reinforced by the terms of her marriage which insisted that she was treated with all the honor that she was used to in england one consequence of this was that william was the only one of sufficient rank to sit down and dine with her as william had previously held an open table and dined with eight or ten companions the newlyweds at first at separately mary in stiff formality and william with his friends and then a compromise was reached william kept a table in the middle of the day and in the evening he retired to dine with mary banning political or military conversation and joking and laughing with his wife their relationship was actually unusually intimate for people of their rank and they even slept in the same bed which is very unusual for someone so important mary's sense of status prevented her from forming intimate relationships with the ladies of the dutch republic and so she passed her time in her houses and gardens playing cards doing needlework enjoying music reading and at her prayers like many a bored millionaire she was a shopaholic and spent recklessly on luxury goods often leading and sometimes making the fashion in theory her diary was 4 000 pounds a year but william frequently had to top this up in the royal library at windsor castle there is one of her account books and this details everything she spent uh from jewelry through gloves and fans to chinese porcelain in a marginal note in 1688 she wrote that she hoped william would and i quote forgive the debts i have made if god gives me life i shall pay them as fast as i can if not i hope the prince will let none be wronged by my follies despite her profligacy anxiety mary had an extremely happy life noting in 1689 on her return to england that she had no small reason to doubt if ever i should be so happy in my own country as she had been in holland the death of charles ii and the accession of james in february 1685 was completely unexpected and william and mary suddenly became next in line to the british throne soon a stream of visitors came from england both those opposing the rule of james ii and those sent by james hoping to win williams support now acutely conscious of their own status william and mary embarked upon an aggrandizement of both their court and their residences mary as i've explained had always retained a sense of her own regality but this markedly increased after charles ii's death and it was noted that she was now served at a table by kneeling pages william and mary's elevation almost exactly coincided with an influx of architectural talent to their court moritz post the stat holders architect had died in 1677 and was succeeded by a man of lesser capability johann van suiten other than the construction of an orangery at once died no major commissions came his way and his annual salary of just 600 guilders a year suggests that he was responsible for only minor works and maintenance the important work of new design passed to the former sculptor and turned architect jacob roman who was first paid for design work in the stat holders accounts in 1684. five years later when williams king roman was to inherit the post of stat holders architect at an increased salary of a thousand florins a year but before that he had already won william and mary's confidence and become their principal architectural designer in 1685 louis xiv revoked the edict of nant which had given protection to french protestants we know in english as the huguenots in the resulting exodus of refugees entering holland was the astounding astonishingly talented and versatile 24 year old designer daniel moreau who quickly came to the notice of william and mary by 1686 he was so integrated into their architectural projects that he was calling himself architect to his highness although he never occupied such a position before mero the work of dutch architects like those in england was confined to the architectural shell of the building and patrons with their upholsterers and suppliers decorated the interiors to their own taste what marrow did was took control of the whole appearance of william and mary's houses their gardens and even their court festivities integrating architecture furnishing and planting and i show you on the screen here um one of maro's interiors it's in fact at head low which i'll go to talk about in a few minutes this is queen mary's library you can see here the brilliant fusion of objects and architecture and painting to create a wonderful interior so from the mid 1680s this new team of roman and marrow began to transform the setting of the stat holders court and this can be seen perhaps most vividly and in an engraving that marrow made of a party at house 10 boss in 1686. william's grandmother had left the estate to her daughters in 1675 when she died and for a decade the ladies had struggled to maintain the house and gardens in 1686 william was finally able to persuade them to sell it to him for 10 000 guilders mary immediately commissioned merrow to redecorate their apartments and in december that year through a tremendous ball in honor of william although william was actually unable to attend amongst the guests was the prince brandenburg and numerous foreign ambassadors and marrow took control of the whole event and his engraving shows the orong zhao the great domed room in the center of the house with the ceiling newly painted by him and the princess royals crowns prominently displayed above each door he also redecorated william and mary's apartments re-hanging the walls with silk painting two ceilings and redisplaying mary's porcelain collections for her by this stage roman and maro were collaborating on a new venture a hunting box or just off literally a pleasure house not far from diren called house head low the medieval castle there was purchased in 1684 and the date on the front of the central block today is 1686 the date it was finished it was built on a new site and was essentially a palladian villa like the villa tiene the main block was a square and quadrant colonnades linked it to flanking service blocks it was built around a central hall and stair leading up to a first floor hall either side of which were two identical three-room parts neat symmetrical and compact it was similar in plan to any number of contemporary small french country houses and it was in many ways rather old-fashioned so these were the places in which william and mary lived in the dutch republic the houses were perfect jewels set in beautiful gardens spurs sparsely but richly furnished their neat compact apartments were clean and well ordered there was no machinery of state no rules of etiquette no fawning court there was no hungry heir in short william and mary enjoyed considerable domestic freedom and while william was not a way of fighting the french they made the most of their domestic existence together unlike king james the first who came to london ignorant of the workings of the english court mary had of course been born there and william had made three substantial visits yet neither of them were much enamored by what they found when they took up residence in london in 1688. the queen privately expressed her dismay at what she regarded as the vanities of court ceremonial but more generally they had designed their lives in holland to be informal comfortable and free from restricting etiquette mary in her diary notes that she regarded their move to england as a loss of liberty but william knew well the power of spectacle pageantry and show and his first few months in england demonstrated he was a master of it he entered exeter at the head of an army kettle drums beating trumpets blaring hurt boys blowing with thousands of flags including a huge pennant flying above william's head saying god and the protestant religion in the middle of it all surrounded by 50 gentlemen of pages was the prince of orange himself each step of the way william took every opportunity to meet the monarchical expectations of both the people and the political class whatever williams personal feelings were about the formality and ceremony of the english court he knew he had to adopt it first because he had to demonstrate his legitimacy and royal power in england was inextricably bound up with the ability to play the part of the sovereign but also because he wanted to persuade his new subjects to back his war with france the best way to do that was to be the magnificent monarch that they expected williams court was different from that of his predecessors not because he was shy boorish or dutch but because it was a court with a unique dynamic and one in which the king had regular and frequent absences abroad as a result court ceremonial was episodic marked by his regular departure in the early summer and returned in the autumn to celebrate these he invented some new ceremonies these were the leave-taking and welcoming audiences that framed his annual travels either june or july the king would receive delegations from the city the church and the judiciary as well as the aristocracy and gentry to bid him bon voyage on his return normally in early october he would receive a ceremonial welcome lasting several days very large numbers attended these as they signaled the court the start of the winter court season the traditional court celebrations on the 5th of november acquired extra meaning as it was also the day that william landed in england in 1688 the king's birthday was on the 14th november and so the celebrations were doubled there was normally a concert and a ball and sometimes dining in public and fireworks before 1689 these were held at whitehall but by the end of the reign they were held at kensington the whole of london was all fed the shops were closed the church bells rang and the ordinance of the tower was discharged in february was princess anne's birthday and after 1694 this was celebrated with great balls normally held at st james's in the summer william would sometimes give concerts in the gardens or in the gallery at kensington attended by large numbers of courtiers william and mary loved the theater mary would go publicly in coffin garden but william enjoyed plays at court and even commissioned a theater to be built in the great hall at hampton court in fact william and mary presided over the most expensive court of any of the stuart monarchs and in due course were to spend quite a lot more than any of the others on architecture 2. in 1689 william found himself at whitehall and here you see whitehall more or less in 1689 um in a view by by kipp it was a vast rambling overpopulated urban residence lying low beside a polluted river and surrounded by hundreds of belching chimneys this was not the place for a man who loved small houses in the countryside and suffered badly from asthma within days william and mary had moved out of westminster to hampton court mary of course knew the place from her childhood but her memories if they had been fond were deceptive she wrote to a dutch friend and i quote at the moment i'm in the country in a place that has been badly neglected it's about four miles from london but lacks many of the commodities of dirham although the house does have four or five hundred rooms william and i quote again found the heir of hampton court agreed so well with him that he resolved to live the greatest part of the year there but that palace was so very old built and irregular that a design was formed of raising new buildings there for the kings and queens partners the bed of state which had been at windsor the official summer residence of charles james was moved to hampton court and ren was commissioned to come up with a design william melancholic homesick and ill was eager to move in as quickly as possible and orders were given for a general court remove from whitehall to hampton court the decision was met with horror keeping the court out of london was bad for the city's economy and dreadful for the sanity of his ministers all of whom lived in and near westminster so the king was persuaded to look for somewhere closer to whitehall and quickly settled on the second earl of nottingham's house in kensington and what i show you here is my friend and colleague edward impis brilliant reconstruction of nottingham houses it was called that william and mary bought with its surrounding grounds for two thousand twenty thousand pounds this uh jacobean mansion was no more suitable for william and mary than tudor hampton court and ren received a second commission to from his new masters to modernize and extend kensington house meanwhile the king and queen rented holland house in kensington from where they urged on work on both projects it was in this way in which king william iii in a matter of months of his accession redrew a centuries-old pattern of royal habitation whitewall was now the center of the national bureaucracy kensington was to be william mary's normal town residence and hampton court the palace of state and this arrangement replicated almost exactly their pattern of existence in the dutch republic because whitewall was equivalent bin and hof a little liked official residence house 10 bosch and kensington were the suburban residences close to the capital and hampton court was the treasure house of state more like han solo styke or hetlon in 1689 kensington house was a compact jacobean villa with a central hall and rooms to either side this is actually a slightly conjectural plan but shows more or less um what nottingham house was like the idea was to enlarge it by the addition of four corner pavilions and a long gallery connected to an or an entrance on the east and here you see um uh edward impis reconstruction of that you can see i think at least three of the corner pavilions clinging onto the corners of the jacobean house and to the left the gallery that linked the house to the um to the street one of the pavilions was for the king one was for the queen one contained staircases and the arrangements within each pavilion were extremely modest by english standards there was a single room of state and the monarch's lodgings were all designed to be private kensington was in fact closely based on william and mary's houses in the netherlands william had in fact designed a residence planned in the dutch style in 1689 uh sir christopher who you see here had been a surveyor of the king's works for 21 years he had faithfully served both charles ii and james ii as a courtier and tori that is to say a supporter of the church of england and an opponent of the exclusion of catholic james from the throne thus wren was deeply implicated with the old regime his sympathies lay firmly with the expelled james and his hold on the surveyorship of the works must have been at best uncertain william and mary's arrival caused a radical redistribution of government and court offices over half of all court officials lost their posts almost all replaced by men who had supported williams arrival and ren of course could not be numbered amongst these people in all this change mary was the one strand of continuity the new queen knew how the court worked both socially and politically her re-establishment of normal steward court life was vital in establishing the legitimacy and efficiency of williams reign so too was the normal and efficient functioning of the office of works including the immediate construction of two palaces and the completion of the queen's privy lodgings at whitehall in the end only two of the personnel of the office of works were replaced in the williamite purge and their head sir christopher survived and this is probably due to mary's favor um of him and her admiration particularly of his work at saint paul's cathedral because for mary the completion of the cathedral was a vital part of the spiritual reformation that she believed that england badly needed ren was central to the future of the cathedral and everyone knew that so design work for hampton court and kensington took place against the background of uncertainty at the office of works and wren's concerted attempt to secure a fruitful and effective modus operandi with his new patrons and into this mix already complicated enough william and mary introduced their own architectural advisors by december 1689 jacob roman was already in london and soon after so was also daniel marrow these two had of course as i've explained led the translation of the stat holders architectural image into a kingly one in the netherlands now there's no written evidence that roman's views were sought on either the design of kensington or hampton court but of course he unlike ren or the english office of works understood william and mary's liking for modest brick-built houses designed on the principle of pavilions it's entirely possible that the final appearance of kensington owed something to a three-way conversation between queen mary ren and roma if its layout was influenced by roman to reflect the kings and queens domestic preferences its interiors also reflected their dutch tastes the queen's rooms were decorated with 787 pieces of porcelain arranged in the manner of daniel moreau like the queen's houses at the netherlands and this is one of mario's designs showing the superfluity of chinese ceramics which were introduced into the new building at kensington design work for williams houses in holland and england was undertaken concurrently designs and models were prepared wherever william was and they were sent backwards and forwards at house divorced built between 1695 and 1700 by william iii for um van keppel who was created lord albemarle one of william's favorites a wooden model was made in england under jakob roman's supervision for the approval of william and lord avamal and then taken to the netherlands in december 1700 while williams hampton court charles hobson his english master joiner arrived bearing a model he made of the staircases at head low but kensington as the private residence of william and mary may have been singled out for special attention by william and mary's dutch advisors a point i think illustrated by the stylistic relationship between kensington and hep low returning to the dutch republic as king in 1691 william realized that hetlo was too small for the entourage that now accompanied him everywhere and he ordered that the building be recast as a royal palace the design of kensington was fresh in his mind and in fact provided the model the original quadrant colonnades which you see on the screen here were removed and exactly as at kensington roma added pavilions on each corner and if you look at this um perspective here you can see the original house the square central house in the middle and either side of it left and right at the front the pavilions that were added on as part of the extension he then added two further pavilions to link these to the service wings that pre-existed at the front in the in plan he had essentially reproduced kensington but this effect of gradually receding compartments focusing on the entrance front made head low more like charles ii's palace winchester which was unfinished but perhaps more significantly more like versailles in giving the house a much greater sense of scale at the same time the interiors of the house were upgraded in the first phase lou had been very much a hunting lodge all its interiors were painted timber and you can see one of the rooms here with its painted timber ceilings uh marbled um with a paint effect to make them look like a marble they were in fact of course timber underneath um the new rooms were now given plaster ceilings with deep moldings of fruit and flowers daniel moreau created a suite of remarkable painted and decorated interiors for the new apartments and the principal rooms in the old building and you can see here the great central hall on the first floor which marrow decorated and the ceiling which he painted hedlow also had rooms now necessary for william and mary as king and queen for mary there was a large anglican chapel with a royal seat facing a pulpit and an altar behind a rail for william there was a new dining room which i show you now where he could dine in public marrow gave special attention to this with rich deep painted and gilded plaster moldings and tapestries which were integrated into the wall compartments on the first floor and i'm showing you my reconstructed plan here the original three-room apartment was supplemented by a second apartment of state with an audience chamber so in the main block you can see left and right of the salon there were effectively three rooms which are described as the king's auntie room the little bed chamber and the cabinet but in the pavilions that were added which you can see to the left and right there was a second uh suite of rooms which were designed to be the rooms of state william in fact continued to use the original bed chamber or slept camera which you can see labeled little bed chamber which after all overlooked the gardens and the new bed chamber the bed camera which i have labeled king's state bed chamber was the state bed chamber which contained a monumental angel dead leader ange which i show you an image of here by daniel moreau an extremely tall and grand structure which was a uh a bed of state so hitler was uh transformed from a hunting lodge into a palace where um the king of great britain could exercise some of his state functions in a small suite of state rooms mary sadly died before she ever saw the second phase of work at head low and william didn't use it much before 1698 and so their intended long-term pattern of use cannot be known but it was 70 miles a good 20 hours ride from the hay and it's clear that although william needed a small suite of state rooms the house was as explained at the time a place for the king to withdraw to and i quote free from wars or weary of government and the english travelers who saw it certainly thought it rather neat than magnificent so looking at kensington and hedlow we can see that the monarchy of william and mary was not the only thing that was international their buildings were designed as if they were in one country with the dutch architects feeding off the english and the english of the dutch and at the heart of it all was a tension the difference between an ancient monarchy that was conservative cumbersome bound by its own rules and regulations and the stateholdership a unique headship of state that was deliberately not monarchical and allowed its holders to live without the straight jacket of courtly protocol what william and mary created in england attempted to bridge that gap kensington was essentially a dutch country house hampton court when it was finished was an english palace of state william knew that he needed both to be an effective monarch but he also knew which one he preferred to live in the story of william and mary concludes my survey of stewart royal houses it's the last piece in a jigsaw of english monarchy between 1603 and 1702 a hundred years of stuart rule and architecture james the first and william iii were both brought up in residences where informality courts which were small intensely personal and adapted to the whims of the sovereign in order to escape the lumbering formality of the english court james built houses outside london including incredibly unpalatial town houses like royston and newmarket where he could live in easy and uncomplicated life william iii did the same constructing out of town palaces that matched his residences in the dutch republic and both james and william hated whitehall the largest grandest and most public indeed most formal royal palace in all europe charles the first and charles ii however were both wedded to the systems of court etiquette and the architectural structures in which they operated they both loved whitehall as a setting for both a court an art collection and a way of life however neither of them were able to enjoy it both were forced to recreate the stuffy formality and deference of the english court in circumstances of war and exile this they did with remarkable success given the catastrophic circumstances in which they found themselves all four monarchs embroiled in dynastic and political revolutions found the context of their lives disrupted and worked hard to create a setting for them that suited their conception of rule these theatres of rule compared with those of the two a century before and the georgian one that came after were unusual complicated and international but appreciating that helps us understand the stewart century of revolution well i'm very pleased to say that i've been invited back next year for another series of lectures i shall be staying in tudor and stewart england but looking at the estates of the power broking families of the age and i shall be starting with the houses and lands of a family that rose to the greatest height and fell with an almighty crash the bolins and i very much hope that you'll join me in september to hear about them thank you you

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 14,287

Rating: 4.8632479 out of 5

Keywords: gresham, gresham college, education, lecture, public, london, debate, academia, knowledge, William III, King William II, monarchy, british history, history, Simon Thurley, Built Environment, Architecture, Mary, William and Mary, royal estate, Netherlands, Edinburgh, Charles I, Charles II, Honselaardijk, Soestdijk Palace, Rijksmuseum, de Nederlandse Hovenier, Het Loo, Huis ten Bosch, De Voorst, Palace of Breda, Holland House, The Kings House, Christopher Wren, Arnold Joost van Keppel

Id: 7o0_iZuE3Lo

Length: 58min 33sec (3513 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020