WINDSOR CASTLE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 7

WINDSOR CASTLE.

(By Walter G. Bell).

IV.—THE ROYAL PALACE.

One King came to Windsor in the saddest of circumstances —cam© there guarded, the Sovereign of a kingdom divided against itself. It was the last resting-place on the journey of Charles I. to London, to what was to be his trial and execution, though at the time his fate was undecided. A fortnight before Charles left / Carisbrooko, to be lodged first in Hurst Castle, on December I, 1648, a council of officers of the Army had petitioned that the person of the King, “in whoso behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all.our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood and mischief ho is therein guilty of.” Charles was conducted to Windsor to bo nearer tho capital, arriving on December 23. Little has transpired of his life in. tho three weeks and more, that he was held a prisoner, closely guarded, in his own Royal Castle. His personal attendants were reduced, and at Windsor the ceremonial which even to that stag© had been maintained around him was forbidden; and tho King for the first time realised his solitude. “Pride’s Purge” had excluded from the Parliament those members though to bo discontented, and events thereafter moved rapidly. Upon January 6 tbe Commons resolved upon tho trial. Charles stayed at AVindsor till .January 19, when he was removed to London, and next day was confronted with his judges in AVcstminster Hall ; January 30 witnessed tho final scene on the scaffold erected before the windows of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Ho came back to AVindsor, a few devoted followers of the lost cause bearing his coffin, upon which tho snowflakes fell, and ho rests for eternity in tiic little vault central in the gorgeous cheir of St. George’s Chapel, keeping company there with Henry AHII. and his Queen, Jane Seymour. The century and si. half which links the first of the Tudor Sovereigns' with the ill-fated representative of the Stuarts had witnessed no great, outstanding changes in AVindsor Castle. The entrance gate to the Lower Ward, with its flanking towers, had been rebuilt from the ground by Henry VIII., as it stands to-day. On the north front, where the ground falls almost sheer, the same monarch built up a, low wall and laid a “wharf” with timber beams. This Elizabeth replaced by the stone wall and parade which now form the North Terrace. The great Queen also laid out bridges of stone across the ditch before tine four entrance gates to tbe castle: old 1 wooden dtawbridges, in the greater security and luxury of tho time, being already considered out of date. A considerable example of her building is seen on this north front hi the Queen Elizabeth’s Gallery, just beyond the Norman Gate. It forms' a part of the Royal Library. The oriel windows are conspicuous. Over a, doorway are the initials E. R. and the date 1583. Queen Mary’s contributions' to the Castle buildings are the little houses of the Military Knights, lying so cosily against the Lower AA'ard’s south wall, each with its tiny patch of garden in front. It is not, perhaps, widely known, that the great transformer of AVindsor Castle was King Charles IT. King George IV. did much to alter what Charles’ 11. had accomplished, and there is a deal of Queen Victoria’s restoration and some destruction; but it was the “Merry Monarch” who first gave to AA’indsor the amenities of a Royal Palace as in Ins time these came to be understood. Elvelyn, the diarist, a visitor before the Restoration to the Throne, described its character in a. sentence. He found the rooms “melancholy and of an ancient magnificence.” The Castle from its height oil the protruding escarp of chalk overlooked some of the finest scenery in the country, but itself gave no outlook. The entire east front, where to-day the Sovereigns from the Royal apartments gaze down the Long AValk and over miles of meadow and forest of AVindsor Great Park, consisted of gaunt walls ntipierced by windows and stone huttre.Hses; and the same on the south. Loopholes at a height from the ground broke tbe smooth surface of the towers. Light was gained almost entirely from within. The Palace, in brief, was no more than a rambling mediaeval house, built against the high and grim defensive walls of the Plantaganet Kings. The deep Castle ditch made the complete circuit of the walls save on flic north side, where owing to a steep fall of the land it was unnecessary. The only fragment ol a terrace upon which residents of the Castle might enjoy the air and the views was the wharf of Henry A ; HI. and Elizabeth. Finance never prospered under Charles If., hut he spent on transforming the Upper AVard of Windsor Castle, sums that to-day would ho represented by many hundreds of thousands sterling. The spirit in which he set to work is disclosed in the opening words ol his warrant to Prince Rupert, then Constable of the Castle, which reads:— “AVlicrcas AA’c have thought fit to pull down and alter in several places the outer walls and other of the buildings of Our Royal Castle of AVindsor, for making Our apartments and lodgings more convenient.” Then' was, in fact, much destruction of the discomfort that had served earlier monarchs, and much rebuilding, which went on most actively from 1674 till James ll.’s flight from the country. Hugh May was the architect employed, and the task was practically completed when, on his death, Sir Christopher AVren stepped into his place as supervisor of the Royal works. In outline and skyline the castle suffered no great change ; Hi e mass of AVindsor perched upon its cliff lias proved enduring throughout the centuries, stable as rook, defying time. But it lost in large part the forbidding aspect given since mediaeval days by so many long blank walls rising sheer from the ditch. Windows to tho Royal apartments were opened in all places, and for the first time since AATmlsur was founded by the Conqueror the Royal residents were able to overlook the extensive expanse of country amidst which they lived. The external terrace was extended from the north to the east and south sides of the I pper Ward. Early in 1680 the Long AValk was projected, and five years after some few trees were planted, but the Hanoverian Kings were established on the throne before that famous avenue spread out its greatlength over the rise and fall of the ground.

May was obsessed witli the idea, of the round-headed window. He placed it everywhere. Eighteenth century prints of the castle show how little it befitted a structure of so many square towers and embattled walls. The gloomy character of the ancient castle had gone, but in the refashioning of the window openings and the refacing of the ancient fabric nearly every trace of the architecture of the .Middle Ages was swept away. In mass and outline alone it more reminder of the first creators. The scheme of renovation carried out by King George IV., again at enormous expense, displaced these offending windows and of them all there is left hut a example of May's doublc-tiered( round-headed win-

dovv, incongruously opened in the wall of King Henry lll.'s Tower. Sir Geoffrey Whatville, the Georgian architect, introduced square-headed windows, much to the advantage of the structure. . , Many alterations were also made in the towers. The chief Royal Apartments, as designed for Charles 11., were not greatly changed, although m part remodelled, and they retain the exquisite decorative carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Phillipps, and the ceilings painted by Vorrio. But as left by Charles 11., there had been no communication save through one apartment to another, or across the open court Wyatville much improved the access from place to place by construcing the internal Long Gallery—the two-storeyed corridor of communication about two sides of the quadrangle, from which doors open upon the long suites of rooms. As the eye takes m the whole mass of Windsor* Castle there is one alteration that cannot escape attention, lill the changes of a century ago the Hound Tower surmounting the Conqueror s mount had been squat and low King Henrv HI. had so left it when he completed, or perhaps rebuilt, the first masonry tower of King Henry 11. Wyatvi'lle, with George IV.'s approval, doubled the height of this central struethe top the machicolations which, havture of Windsor Oastle, placing around ths top the machicolations which having then no possible purnosc, are perhaps regrettable, and further to increase the height he built the little surmounting turret bearing the flagstaff. Opinions upon the advisability of this step will continue to differ. The low Round Tower, as seen in curly prints, has dignity, but the Castle complete undoubted! v' gains in impresslveneiss by the greater height given to tins dominant feature of it. The stone from base to summit is from the same quarries, and now, after a century's weathering, it needs an expert eye to tell where the masonry of the early Henries ends and that of the Hanoverian King begins. Such changes as: have been made at Windsor Castle in the past century have been mostly internal, though there has been some regrettable destruction of old buildings in the Lower Walrd. Salvin and Scott's lavish hands in "restorations" have, too, destroyed much cf the ancient character of towers and buildings. With it all Windsor remains unique. In the extent of its buildings, in continuous historical association, in the majesty of its site, the world has nothing like it. The proudest Palace in Europe, it is fitting the home, of the oldest line of reigning Sovereigns'.