When Kensington Palace became a Royal Residence

by Andrea Zuvich

There’s something about Kensington Palace that immediately conjures up the word glamorous. Perhaps it is because in recent memory, it has been the home of notable, glamorous royals such as the late Princess Margaret, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and also because of its current inhabitant, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. But what we now know of Kensington Palace is very different from what it once was. As I had the great honour to have been on the original team that developed the Garden History Tours at Kensington Palace, I learned first-hand about the history and rather more humble origins of the great royal palace – and I hope to share some of that here with you all today. 

Before modern Kensington became the playground of the world’s richest people, it was a sleepy verdant little village renowned for its purity of air. Royals have only inhabited the house since the late 17^th-century, when William III and Mary II moved in. But the history of the land goes back farther than that. According to Kensington Palace by W.J. Loftie, a late Victorian historian, the land upon which Kensington Palace now lies was (in the 14^th century) on an area called Neyt Manor, one of three manorial estates owned by the Abbey of Westminster. Indeed, archival documents and archaeological assessments from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea state there was a Neyt Manor in 1386. Whatever building was left standing is believed to have been demolished in 1602.

A Jacobean house was built in 1605 for Sir George Coppin three years after the Neyt Manor structure was razed. Following Coppin’s death in 1619, it was purchased by the Finch family. Much later on, the house was named “Nottingham House” because Sir Heneage Finch was the Earl of Nottingham (since 1681).

In 1688, what is known as the “Glorious Revolution” occurred in which James II was ousted from power by his nephew/son-in-law William of Orange and James’s daughter/William’s wife and cousin, Mary. In 1689, William and Mary were crowned King and Queen, and they soon set out to find where to live. Why? You may well wonder, considering that they already had St. James’s Palace and Whitehall Palace. But Whitehall rested in an area by the River Thames that was full of fog, smoke, and generally unpleasant air. This wreaked havoc with King William’s chronic asthma and so more verdant climes were sought. They soon purchased Nottingham House from Daniel Finch, the 2^nd Earl of Nottingham (who happened to be his Secretary of State), for a whopping £14,000-18,000.

After this, they hired Sir Christopher Wren to expand and modernise the Jacobean building into something bigger and more fashionable. Construction work went on between 1689-1690. Unfortunately, Mary was a bit impatient with what she perceived to be the slow progress of the building. This can probably be attributed to her desire to make a comfortable home for William. She wrote to her beloved:

“the schafolds are up, the windows must be boarded up, but as soon as it is done, your own apartment may be furnished.”

Her over-eagerness to get the building works completed meant that the workman built too quickly, and so the quality of their work became a secondary consideration. Mary wrote (original spelling maintained): “This made me go often to Kinsington to hasten the worckmen, and I was so impatient to beat that place, imagining to find more ease there.”

As a result of this, sadly, November 1689 saw part of the newly-built building fall down ‘killing seven or eight workman’ – and this tragedy also occurred during renovation work to Hampton Court Palace. Mary characteristically blamed herself for these deaths.

Her diary continues: “This I often reproved my self for and at last it pleased God to shew me the uncertainty of all things…All this much as it was the fault of the worckmen, humanly speacking, yet shewed me the hand of God plainly in it, and I was truly humbled.”

The gardens were redone at this time as well, with heavily manicured box hedging – elaborately formed in the formal Baroque (modern) style which was then so popular. William and Mary spent nearly the same amount on these magnificent gardens as they did on the house! They both loved gardening and their previous homes in the Dutch Republic (The Netherlands), especially Paleis Het Loo, also had wonderfully symmetrical parterres in this elegant style. Sadly, none of their Kensington gardens exist to this day!

In 1690, the interior of the house began to be decorated with glorious woodcarvings from Baroque carver Grinling Gibbons. Visitors to Kensington Palace’s State Apartments can see these for themselves, in the King’s Presence Chamber and in Queen Mary’s Gallery. Outside the Queen’s Entrance, the monogram (entwined initials) of William and Mary is clearly visible above the doorway.

Mary died from haemorrhagic smallpox in 1694, plunging her husband into a deep grief. John Evelyn, the diarist and courtier, visited the now-sole-monarch William in 1696 at Kensington House and said of it:

“I went to the King’s house at Kensington with some Ladys: The House is very noble, tho not greate; the Gallerys furnished with all the best Pictures of all the Houses, of Titian, Raphael, Correggio, Holbein, Julio Romano, Bassan, V. Dyke: Tintoret, & others, with a world of Porcelain; a pretty private Library; the Garden about it very delicious.”

King William III died in 1702, leaving the throne to his sister-in-law, Anne, who became the last of the Stuarts. The famous statue of William III that faces High Street Kensington is a 20^th-century addition – a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in 1907. I hope that those who are able to visit Kensington Palace in the future will take a moment and think about this – about the time when Kensington Palace first became a royal residence.

All photos © Andrea Zuvich.

           

Sources:

·         Ashworth, Helen. York Place Kensington. The Heritage Network, via Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Access date: 27/02/2015.

·         Beard, Geoffrey. The Works of Grinling Gibbons. John Murray Publishers Ltd, London, 1989.

·         Evelyn, John. Diary.

·         Faulkner, Patrick A. Nottingham House: John Thorpe and his Relation to Kensington Palace.  Archaeology Data Service. Access date: 27/02/2015.

·         Howard, Philip. The Royal Palaces. Hamish Hamilton, London, 1970.

·         Loftie, W.J. Kensington Palace. 1898.

·         Mary II, Queen. Letters & Memoirs, 1689.

·         Tinniswood, Adrian. His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren. Pimlico, London, 2002.

·         Williams, Neville. Royal Homes of Great Britain from Medieval to Modern Times. Lutterworth Press, London, 1971.

·        WORK 38/428. Sir George Coppin’s House, Kensington. National Archives, Kew, UK.


This is an Editor’s Choice from the #EHFA archives, originally published February 28, 2015.

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Andrea Zuvich is an independent seventeenth-century historian and anthropologist specialising in the House of Stuart (1603-1714). Zuvich obtained degrees in History and Anthropology at the University of Central Florida and is the host of the popular ‘The Seventeenth Century Lady’ blog. Zuvich is also a historical consultant for TV, film, and radio. She most recently appeared in BBC Four’s ‘Charles I: Downfall of a King’. She was one of the original developers of and leaders on the award-winning Garden History Tours at Kensington Palace and has written six books about the Stuart period. Zuvich is also a trained actress and professional voice-over artist, narrating audiobooks and providing voice work for several mobile apps.

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How to Send a King Mad...and Steal his Crown at the Same Time

by P. L. Farrar

One of the best things about history is that we can always learn something from it. In this instance, we learn that it is in fact possible to drive someone crazy.

Whilst everyone remembers George III as being the Mad King there has been more than one mad king in English history. In this case James II, one of the unfortunate Stuart kings. Except he didn't have a rare blood disease. He was driven to madness.

From the early days of his reign in 1685, it had been felt that James II was attempting to return England to Catholicism, a thought which frightened the fiercely Protestant Parliament and a large proportion of the English nation. When his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, on 10th June 1688, that threat of Catholicism seemed even greater.

So, naturally Parliament did what any self-respecting Parliament would do in this position. They (or more specifically the Immortal Seven) invited William of Orange -- husband to James' Protestant daughter, Mary -- to come and save them, claiming that the people were 'desirous of a change' and would 'willingly contribute to it, if they had such protection to countenance their rising, as would secure them from being destroyed.'

How could William possibly refuse? A fellow Protestant country needed his help. Not only was he being offered his own kingdom, but it would also give him the means to stand up to Louis XIV. Two birds, one stone.  Ideal!

Quite frankly James' attempts to keep his kingdom were not the most effective. He attempted to call Parliament -- he was not exactly in their good books -- sent his wife and son over to France to get foreign help and threw the royal seal into the Thames, because there was no way that they would be able to make another one. 

James was already losing the plot, but really William pushed him that little bit further. 

William defied all expectations by sailing in the autumn. (It just wasn't invading season, old sport.) He landed in Torbay, Devon, on 5th November 1688 and proceeded to Exeter with his forces. He stayed in the city for three weeks as he tried to gauge local opinion. Both William's army and James' army then went to meet on Salisbury Plain where no doubt the deciding battle would occur!


There was just one slight hiccup.... James abandoned his troops before they even reached the battlefield and scarpered back to London. Whereupon, all the officers from his army went to join William.

James then tried to flee the country, but he was caught in Kent, because a local fisherman recognized his face from the coin. Oops.

James was imprisoned in Rochester Castle after his foiled escape (his first cousin five times removed, Louis XVI, suffered the same fate during the French Revolution when he was also recognized from a coin). And William, just to make certain that he stayed put, positioned Dutch guards outside the king's quarters.

None of them spoke English and so all James heard was these men jabbering in Dutch -- which he didn't understand. His obvious conclusion was that he was surrounded by devils and that he had gone mad. This was probably not William's intention. It is most likely that he wanted his father-in-law guarded by men he trusted who would not be open to bribery from the king. 

The final difficulty for William was deciding what to do with his father-in-law.  If he remained in England, he and his supporters would remain a threat. The most important thing was to avoid executing him like his father, Charles I, which would have erupted into another Civil War. William realized that he needed to make it seem as if James had abandoned the country and left the throne vacant.

Now, the one thing that James wanted more than anything was to escape, so if a boat happened to be waiting to take him across the Channel then he would surely take it. Such a boat was found on 23rd December 1688 and he was allowed to escape without his guards making any attempt to stop him.

It is debated by historians as to whether William planted the convenient boat there or not or whether James' followers did, but either way James was able to slip away to France. 

This left William able to consolidate his position as joint monarch with his wife. 

Whether or not James was already slightly mad is debatable. He certainly had little grasp on reality and believed that his people would welcome a conversion back to Catholicism. Really William's actions were just the tip of the iceberg that resulted in James' believing he had gone mad. 

James II never saw England again and after an attempt to regain his throne with Louis XIV's help, and coming face to face with William III when they fought each other at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, James returned to France where he spent the remainder of his life living off the charity of his cousin the Sun King.

As for England, William took it forward to the future, creating a compromise of power between Crown and Parliament through the Bill of Rights 1689, the Triennial Act 1694 and the Act of Settlement 1701, many of the articles of which are still in effect today.

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P.L. Farrar is a young writer, working on an historical novel set in early 19th century England, and currently studying the history of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs.