"You must no more call it York Place--that is past For, since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost; 'Tis now the King's and call'd Whitehall."
It must be remembered that there was then no Parliament Street, and the palace buildings occupied all the ground from Old Scotland Yard to Downing Street, from St. James's Park to the river. King Henry added very much to the land belonging to the palace, also to the buildings. He was fond of sport, and his additions show his tastes in this direction; he built a tennis-court, a tilt-yard,--on the site of the Horse Guards--a bowling-green, and a cockpit. The exact site of the cockpit has long been a matter of uncertainty, but it is now very generally believed that the entrance was just where the present Treasury entrance is.
The palace does not seem to have been very homogeneous; it contained three courts, including Old Scotland Yard, in which was the Guard House. The King and Queen occupied the first court, where was what remained of old York House; here also was the great Hall, the Presence Chamber, and the Banqueting House. In the second court was the way to the Audience and Council Chambers, the Chapel, the offices of the Palace, and the Watergate.
Henry VIII. died in this palace, and all the noble names of his and the succeeding reigns seem to haunt the site of the now vanished building. Here came Sir Thomas More, Erasmus and Thomas Cromwell; Holbein occupied a set of apartments, and received a salary of 200 florins for painting and decorating the rooms. Here are the ghosts of Cranmer, Katharine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Latimer and Ridley; later we see a courtlier gathering--Cecil, Essex, Leicester, Raleigh, Drake, Walsingham, Philip Sydney. So true it is, the King doth make the Court. Some time later, in the reign of Charles II., we have a different class of men altogether--Monk, Clarendon, Sedley, Rochester, Wycherley, Dryden, Butler, Suckling, Carew. Here came crowds to be touched for the King's evil. Here the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth implored pardon at his uncle's feet in vain. Whitehall was also the home of the short-lived masque, a form of entertainment extremely costly.
In 1691 a fire broke out, and all the buildings between the stone gallery and the river were burned down, and six years later another fire finished nearly all that the first had left.