CHAPTER VI 



MARLBOROUGH HOUSE ^ 



Situated as it is on the north side of the Mall, and close to 

 St. James's Palace, no account of Marlborough House and its 

 garden can be considered in any way complete, without a 

 brief description of its surroundings before the mansion was 

 built. 



By the time of Henry VIII., the Tower had fallen out 

 of favour as the London abode of the Sovereign. The two 

 palaces were Whitehall and Westminster. Henry being 

 devoted to hunting and falconry, a park, or chase, for these 

 pastimes extended northwards from Whitehall (including in 

 its area Islington, Highgate, Hornsey and Hampstead Heath) 

 and so back by Marylebone, narrowing as it went, to West- 

 minster. At this end of the huge park, a low swampy 

 meadow, belonging to a hospital for lepers, was enclosed as a 

 nursery for deer. The King acquired the hospital, drained 

 the marsh, and converted them into " our Palace of St. 

 James's " and its park. The rest of the large chase north- 

 wards was disafforested during the reigns of Edward VI. and 

 Mary. It is interesting to notice that from its earliest days 

 to the present time, St. James's Park has always been in some 

 sort a royal Zoological Gardens. Charles H. found much 

 amusement in watching the habits of the creatures he kept 

 there. He had a large collection of birds in aviaries on the 

 south wall, from which fact the name of Birdcage Walk is 

 derived. The King's fondness for the Park led him to employ 

 Le Notre to lay it out anew, and both Evelyn and Pepys, the 

 great diarists of his period, make several allusions to the work 



* In this and the following chapter several particulars are taken from Old and New 

 London^ by Edward Walford. 



