In the Old Palace Yard, now covered by buildings, were fought out certain ordeals of battle. Here was held at least one famous tournament, that in which the two Scottish prisoners, the Earl Douglas and Sir William Douglas, bore themselves so gallantly that the King restored them to liberty on their promise not to fight against the English.
One memory of Old Palace Yard must not be forgotten. Geoffrey Chaucer lived during his last year at a house adjoining the White Rose Tavern abutting on the Lady Chapel of the Abbey. The house was swept away to make room for Henry VII.'s chapel. Nor must we forget that Ben Jonson lived and died in a house over the gate or passage from the churchyard to the old palace. In the south-east corner of Old Palace Yard stood the house hired by the Gunpowder Plot conspirators for the conveyance of the barrels into the vault. And it was in Old Palace Yard that four of them suffered death.
The whole of the ground now occupied by the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hall and New Palace Yard was formerly covered with the walls, gates, tower, state chambers, private chambers, offices, stables, gardens, and outhouses, of the King's House, Westminster. Until sixty years ago, when fire finally destroyed them, still stood on this spot many of the buildings, altered and reroofed, repaired, and with changed windows and new decorations, of Edward the Confessor, and perhaps of Knut. Still under these modern houses the ground is covered with the old cellars, vaults and crypts, which it was found safer and cheaper to fill with cement than to break up and carry away.
It is at present impossible to present a plan of the King's House such as it was when Edward the Confessor occupied it; we can, however, draw an incomplete plan of the place later on, say in the fourteenth century.
The palace was walled, but not moated; it had two principal gates, one opening to the north, and another on the river. The circuit of the wall only included twelve acres and a half, and into this compass had to be crowded in Plantagenet times the King's and Queen's state and private apartments, and accommodation for an immense army of followers, and also for all the craftsmen and artificers required by the Court. The total number of persons thus housed in the fourteenth century is reckoned at 20,000. The part of the King's House thus occupied, the narrow streets of gabled houses, with tourelles at the corners, and much gilded and carved work, has vanished completely, even to the memory. When King Henry VIII. removed to the palace at Whitehall a new Westminster arose about his old Court; this in its turn almost vanished with the fire of 1834. Up to this time some of the old buildings remained, but have now completely gone. Among them were the Painted Chamber, the Star Chamber, the old House of Lords, and Princes' Chamber, all part of Edward the Confessor's palace. In the Painted Chamber the Confessor himself died, but it is manifestly impossible to give here any minute account of the chambers in the ancient building.