Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/219

Rh The proportion of the work, and the domestic character which it was evidently the design of Wren that it should bear, has unfortunately been recently much spoiled by the addition of somewhat mean seats up the centre, which was intended to have been a wide free space, for processions and groups at royal weddings and the like. Purists would endeavour to restore the chapel to its state under Wolsey, or at least under Henry VIII., but a wider sympathy should preserve so beautiful an example of the taste of our nearer fore-fathers in church matters from destruction. There are not too many of the "Queen Anne" chapels in existence; we could better spare some better things. And the chapel at Hampton Court,like that at Trinity College, Oxford, should be suffered to endure without further "restoration" as a valuable memorial of an interesting epoch in ecclesiastical art.

The chapel is interesting, too, from the scenes that have taken place within its walls. There Edward VI. was christened with great pomp, his sister Mary standing godmother. The high altar was "richly garnished with plate and stuff," and the font of solid silver gilt was set up on a stage in front of it. The long procession passed through great part of the palace. A few days later the coffin of Queen Jane Seymour rested there before it was taken to Windsor. When King Edward himself was king, he sat long hours in the chapel listening to the dreary sermons of the prolix ministers of the day. Protestant Dissenters may feel a special interest in a chapel in which doubtless