y foreign prince with his retinue; also
offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury, and of
Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business as it might
be necessary to have done there upon the king's longer residence there
than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great officers of the
Household; so that had the house had two great squares added, as was
designed, there would have been no room to spare, or that would not have
been very well filled. But the king's death put an end to all these
things.

Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemed abandoned of its
patron. They have gotten a kind of proverbial saying relating to Hampton
Court, viz., that it has been generally chosen by every other prince
since it became a house of note. King Charles was the first that
delighted in it since Queen Elizabeth's time. As for the reigns before,
it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was not made a royal house
till King Charles I., who was not only a prince that delighted in country
retirements, but knew how to make choice of them by the beauty of their
situation, the goodness of the air, &c. He took great delight here, and,
had he lived to enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thing
than it was. But we all know what took him off from that felicity, and
all others; and this house was at last made one of his prisons by his
rebellious subjects.

His son, King Charles II., may well be said to have an aversion to the
place, for the reason just mentioned--namely, the treatment his royal
father met with there--and particularly that the rebel and murderer of
his father, Cromwell, afterwards possessed this palace, and revelled here
in the blood of the royal party, as he had done in that of his sovereign.
King Charles II. therefore chose Windsor, and bestowed a vast sum in
beautifying the castle there, and which brought it to the perfection we
see it in at this day--some few alterations excepted, done in the time of
King William.

King William (for King James is not to be named as to his choice of
retired palaces, his delight running quite another way)--I say, King
William fixed upon Hampton Court, and it was in his reign that Hampton
Court put on new clothes, and, being dressed gay and glorious, made the
figure we now see it in.

The late queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kind regards to the
prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where her care of his