who were attracted to the court of Henry VIII by the
lavish patronage of the young monarch, it continued to the end of the
century to check the development of pure Renaissance, the two styles to
a great extent neutralising each other.

It is significant of the change of the attitude of rulers and ruled
towards religion that took place in England during the 16th and 17th
centuries, that it was no longer in churches and cathedrals that
architecture achieved its greatest triumphs, but in palaces,
manor-houses, colleges, and places of public entertainment. No longer
was the soaring Gothic style to voice in stone the aspirations of
worshippers for closer intercourse with the divine; the best energies of
architects were henceforth to be directed to the promotion of comfort
and luxury in private life, and for the realisation of this
comparatively ignoble aim the revived classic style was peculiarly
adapted. True, the spirit of the Renaissance did not display itself so
fully in architecture as in other branches of human endeavour, but for
all that its working was very apparent, assuming a certain character of
its own in England.

[Illustration: Portion of Lilford Hall, Northants]

First Italians, amongst whom the most distinguished were Torregiano,
designer of the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey, Giovanni da
Majano, and Giovanni da Padua, the architect of Longleat in Wiltshire,
then Flemings and Germans, none of whom, however, except John of Cleves,
designer of Caius College, Cambridge, rose to any special eminence,
endeavoured to graft their own upon English methods, succeeding with
rare exceptions only so far as the minor details of ornamentation were
concerned.

It is not to these men of alien birth but to the builders and masons of
rural England that the country owes the many noble residences, dating
from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, that, Gothic so far as
their principles of construction are concerned, are enriched or spoiled,
according to the point of view from which they are considered, by
Renaissance ornamentation. Amongst these builders Thomas Holt, author of
the Divinity School of Oxford, and Robert Smithson and John Thorpe,
joint designers of Wollaton Hall, Northamptonshire, were especially
distinguished. To the last named many critics also attribute Holland
House, London, Rushton, Kirkby and Apethorpe Halls in Northamptonshire,
and Knowle House in Kent, all of which are truly typical examples o