56 ROYAL GARDENS 



first of a long list of British-born royal gardeners, his imme- 

 diate successor being George London, who was his pupil, 

 and who took Henry Wise into partnership with him, as 

 hinted at before. 



There is no record of work done at Hampton Court 

 during the short and disastrous reign of James II. But with 

 the coming of William and Mary in 1688, a fresh impetus 

 was given, and new ideas brought to bear on the enlargement 

 of the palace ; and on the continuation and (in many parti- 

 culars) improvement of the work begun by Charles. Very 

 soon after his arrival in England, William found it impossible 

 to live in the smoke and foul air of London. And to his 

 poor health Hampton Court owes much of the grandeur and 

 some of the incongruity of its present appearance. Macaulay, 

 in a passage too long to quote in full, says, " As William 

 purposed to make the edifice his chief palace, it was neces- 

 sary for him to plant and to build . . . and next to hunting, 

 though at a great interval, his favourite amusements were 

 architecture and gardening." Unfortunately these " amuse- 

 ments " led him to destroy a great many beautiful features 

 of the grand old Tudor palace ; and had time been allowed 

 him, it is very doubtful if any part of it would have been 

 left. But in the gardens, on the other hand, his work was 

 principally constructive ; and, in the main, must be considered 

 a grand success. On the i6th July 1689, John Evelyn once 

 more went down to Hampton Court, and notes, " A great 

 apartment and spacious garden with fountains was beginning 

 in the park at the head of the canal." The fault of being 

 " too narrow," which he had found twenty-seven years 

 before, was now in process of being corrected. William 

 filled up about two hundred yards at the west end of the 

 Long Water, and turned the semicircle enclosed within 

 Charles's limes into a fountain garden with a large round 

 basin-pond in its centre. But he afterwards removed the 

 bronze fountain " by Fanelli " to the still larger round pond 

 in the famous Chestnut Avenue in Bushey Park. This was 

 designed to be the main approach to an entirely new palace 



