ROYAL RESIDENCES 5 



Somerset. On Edward VI.'s death, not without 

 suspicion of poison, Northumberland kept the 

 event secret for three days, in hope of being able 

 to seize the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, 

 before carrying out his plot to put Jane and her 

 newly wedded husband on the throne. It seems 

 to have been at Syon that the reluctant queen 

 was informed of the part she had to play ; and 

 thence she was taken by water to the Tower, in 

 which she would find a heavenly crown. 



Both Mary and Elizabeth lived from time to 

 time at Richmond, recommended by its nearness 

 to London, and by the river that made a royal 

 highway in that age of bad roads. Here Eliza- 

 beth died, and from her death-bed Sir Robert 

 Carey spurred through thick and thin to carry 

 news of his inheritance to the King of Scots. 

 James I. was not the man to neglect such a 

 good hunting country ; early in his reign we find 

 the Courts of Law and all seated for a time at 

 Richmond, when driven out of London by the 

 plague. But Hampton Court up the river, as 

 Greenwich below, seems to have been preferred 

 for the king's residence ; then that lover of the 

 chase found a paradise more to his mind in 

 Theobald's Park, near Enfield, for which he 



