Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/65

Rh hall, where they were lodged in that part of the palace known as the Cockpit, on the border of St. James's Park. But St. James's Palace itself was reserved for the ultimate use of Henry, and here he set up his establishment as Prince of Wales in 1610 and died in 1612. Richmond and Woodstock were given him for country houses, and at his death he was also buying up interests in Sheen House and Kenilworth. For Charles Holdenby or Holmby House in Northamptonshire was bought in 1605, and on his brother's death he succeeded to St. James's. The King was thus left with Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Windsor as his principal palaces. Naturally those of his wife and son remained available for occasional visits, and the hunting facilities of Theobalds and Woodstock were an agreeable addition to those of Hampton Court and Windsor themselves. But they did not suffice for James, who set about providing himself with hunting quarters in various localities. The most important of these was Royston Priory, on the borders of Cambridgeshire and Herts., which he bought after a year's trial in 1604 and enlarged into a house of some pretensions. Others were at Newmarket, Thetford, Hinchinbrook, Ware, and Woking, while stables were kept up at St. Albans and Reading. Theobalds, Royston, and Newmarket were all reached by a private road, maintained, like the King's Road to Hampton Court and another to Greenwich, by James himself. The arrangement of the principal rooms of a Tudor palace can be well studied on the plan of Hampton Court. There is a great Hall, and at the back of it the entrance to a Great Chamber. At Hampton Court and Richmond this appears to have served also as a Guard or Watching Chamber, but