Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/167

Rh was not virtuous, and he was not a hero. He left us a legacy of ruinous and bloody wars, a half-century of oligarchy under Whig control, and a hatred of foreigners almost as bitter as that bequeathed by the Marian persecution.

XI William as a king and as a man is not worthy of English admiration. If we are to enjoy the new Hampton Court with an eye on its history, we must regard it as Wren's creation, not his. And William we may leave in the "Banquet House," which he built in 1700, smoking with Keppel and Bentinck, with his mug before him.

What has to be said of the Palace under the Dutch king comes more appropriately in connection with the work of Wren. William liked Hampton Court, and lived there as much as he could.

"He found the air," says Burnet, "agreed so well with him, that he resolved to live the greatest part of the year there." And much as he hated Louis XIV., he must needs, like everybody else, imitate him. So a new Hampton Court was to rise as a rival to Versailles. "A very few days after he was set on the throne," says Burnet again, "he went out to Hampton Court, and from that palace came into town only on council days; so that the face of a court and the rendezvous usual in the public rooms was now quite broken." His love