54 ROYAL GARDENS 



Hampton Court for ready money. As far as the parks are 

 concerned this was actually done, but within a few months 

 Cromwell, who was known to have a liking for the place, 

 was proclaimed Lord Protector, the parks were bought 

 back, and the whole property by Act of Parliament passed 

 into his hands. He seems to have kept up the gardens 

 during the few years he occupied the palace, and he repaired 

 the conduit which Charles had made to supply the fountains 

 and ponds. 



The last forty years of the seventeenth century are in 

 many respects the most important in the history of Hampton 

 Court. For it was during this period that palace, parks and 

 gardens assumed the appearance they now have. Charles IL, 

 of whom one who knew him well said, " he loved planting 

 and building," began to lay out and re-plant the home park 

 immediately after the Restoration. Two years later Evelyn 

 gives his first description of Hampton Court, whither he had 

 gone to see the new Queen. He says, " Hampton Court is 

 as noble and uniforme a pile, and as capacious as any Gotiq 

 architecture can have made it. . . . The park formerly 

 a flat naked piece of ground, now planted with sweete rows 

 of lime trees ; and the canall for water now neere perfected ; 

 also the hare-park. In the garden is a rich and noble 

 fountaine, with syrens, statues, &c. cast in copper by Fanelli, 

 but no plenty of water. The cradle-walk of horne-beame 

 in the garden is, for the perplexed twining of the trees, very 

 observable. There is a parterre which they call Paradise, in 

 which is a pretty banquetting-house set over a cave or cellar. 

 All these gardens might be exceedingly improved, as being 

 too narrow for such a place." From this it would appear 

 that the magnificent plan for garden and park to the east 

 of the palace, generally attributed to William IIL, was, in 

 reality, at all events begun by Charles. And, though there 

 is no actual record of the fact, it is probable that Le Notre, 

 the famous French landscape-gardener, devised the " canall," 

 now the Long Water, the great semicircle of trees which en- 

 closes the east garden, and the radiating avenues of limes in the 



