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English 16th or early 17th domestic or academic architecture at its
best. To about the same period belong Lilford Hall, Northants, Westwood,
Bolsover, Charlton, and Hatfield Houses, all somewhat wanting in the
dignified simplicity of plan of the work of the men quoted above, but
with an undoubted charm of their own.

The master-builders who alike designed and executed the many beautiful
mansions and colleges of the Elizabethan age--with whom must be
associated the later John Abel, designer of several fine market-halls,
including those of Kingston, Hereford, and Leominster--may justly be
said to have paved the way for Inigo Jones, the first Englishman to
introduce pure Renaissance architecture into his native land. Already
before his advent these humble predecessors had partly evolved, out of
the mediaeval castle and the mediaeval cottage, what was to become the
typical English home, bringing about something like a revolution in
planning by the innovations introduced by them with a view to admitting
more air and light, and rendering access to the upper floors easier by
the substitution of an internal staircase, for the external flight of
steps leading up to each separate room hitherto the fashion.

Gifted with a vivid imagination and a rare faculty of design, Inigo
Jones succeeded in so adapting Italian ideals, especially those of
Palladio, to English needs, that he may justly be said to have founded
something approaching to a national style. Unfortunately few of the many
schemes evolved by him were carried out in their entirety, but his plans
and drawings prove him to have been the equal and, in some respects,
even the superior of his great successor, Sir Christopher Wren. Of his
grand design for the new Palace of Whitehall after the fire of 1619, the
Banqueting Hall, considered his masterpiece, alone was completed, but he
was the real architect of the equally successful Greenwich Hospital, for
it was his plan that was followed after his death by Wren.

Although it is the custom to dwell much on the unique opportunity
afforded to Sir Christopher Wren by the great fire of 1666, there is no
doubt that even without it he would have set his seal on the period
during which he lived. His additions to Hampton Court Palace are most
dignified and appropriate, his semi-Gothic Tom Tower at Oxford well
illustrates his keen sense of environment, and his design for a Royal
Palace at Winchester, had it been carried out, would have