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Some royal and other great houses in England: Extracts from the journal of Abram Booth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
On 1 March 1629 a small but high-level Dutch deputation arrived in London. It represented the Dutch East India Company and its mission was to try and normalize relations between the Company and its English counterpart, and to secure the release of three Dutch trading ships confiscated by the English in the aftermath of the Amboyna incident (1623).
- Type
- Section 7: Recording and Criticism
- Information
- Architectural History , Volume 27: Design and Practice in British Architecture , 1984 , pp. 503 - 509
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984
References
Notes
1 Nothing survives of these garden ornaments installed mainly between c. i $88—c. 1601. Cf. Colvin, H. M. (ed.), The History of the King’s Works, iv (1982), 107-10.Google Scholar
2 There can be no doubt that Booth is here referring to the half-completed Queen’s House.
3 Presumably Venetian mirrors coated with their characteristic silvering, an amalgam of tin and mercury. Alternatively, Booth may have been referring to mirrors with silver frames, which were popular at the time. ( Thornton, P. Seventeenth Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (1978), p. 75.Google Scholar)
4 Throne, Royal Thomas, cf. Platter’s description (Claire Williams, Thomas Platter's travels in England 1599, 1937, p. 203).Google Scholar The Paradise Chamber, a pre-Elizabethan room further embellished during Elizabeth’s reign. Its location is unknown but contemporary building accounts refer to it as the ‘Rich Chamber’ (Colvin, op. cit., p. 142).
5 Built in 1616-17. Nothing is however known of its appearance except that it was 108 ft long and 36 ft wide (ibid., p. 177).
6 This rock-well or fountain was erected during the ownership of Lord Lumley. Other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century eyewitness accounts suggest this to have been an open structure (J. Dent, The Quest for Nonsuch (1962), p. 122; Colvin, op. cit., p. 205), but Booth’s use of the term ‘hoolsgewijse’ may indicate a type of grotto. See H. Hexham, A Copious English and Netherduytch Dictionarie (Rotterdam, 1648/58).
7 Actually, according to a summary account of March 1622, the building was faced with a mixture of Portland, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire Stone. (Quoted in Palme, P. Triumph of Peace — a study of the Whitehall Banqueting House (1957), p. 64.Google Scholar) The result could thus hardly have given the ‘all white’ appearance that Booth records.
8 Hentzner gave a more detailed account of these furnishings in 1598. For this see Rye, W. B. England as seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James I (1865), pp. 200-01 Google Scholar, n. 33.
9 Hentzner described the tomb as follows: ‘In the back choir or additional Chapel are shown preparations made by Cardinal Wolsey, who was afterwards capitally punished, for his own tomb, consisting of 8 large brazen columns placed round it, and nearer the tomb four others in the shape of candlesticks; the tomb itself is of black and white marble — all which are reserved, according to report, for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth’, (Rye, op. cit., p. 199). This tomb, designed and partly completed by Benedetto da Rovezzano, was dismantled and sold off in piecemeal fashion during the Commonwealth. Two of the sculpted candlestick columns are at StBavon in Ghent. The sarcophagus was later used for Nelson’s monument in St Paul’s ( Whinney, M. Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830 (1964), PP- 5, 231.Google Scholar n. 5).
10 A recent reconstruction of the original Jacobean gallery suggests a length of 220 ft x 30 ft. ( Drury, P. J. ‘No other palace in the Kingdom will compare with it: the evolution of Audley End 1605-1745’, Architectural History, 23 (1980), 8).Google Scholar
11 Booth’s drawing of the house is reproduced in Architectural History, 24 (1981), PI. 2c. In a letter to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, dated 5 April 1612, Sir Noel de Caron gives some clues as to the designer(s) of Caron House: ‘I am requested by an honest and young man, whose father has been the principal workman who built my house here in South Lambeth, and after his death this young man, who is still in my service. He informs me that the Clerk to the Surveyor at Hampton Court is dead, and that his place is at the disposal of your Excellence. He would desire this place if possible, and because I can witness to his diligence while he was on my work at the least 8 or to years, I should be bold to recommend him to you; for if your excellency has not already disposed of that place, I think certainly that 1 should gain no discredit by him’. (Quoted in Surrey Archaeological Collections, 3 (1865), 32.) The person who was actually appointed to the post mentioned by De Caron, Edward Basil (d. 1635/36), the younger brother of Simon Basil, the Surveyor, unfortunately does not quite seem to fit the description. (For him see H. M. Colvin (ed.), History of the King’s Works, 111, parti (1975), 135.) Caron House must have been substantially completed by July 1599 when Queen Elizabeth dined there. According to the Rev. Daniel Lysons (Environs of London, 1 (1810), 239) the house — which after Sir Noel’s death in 1624 passed to the Prince of Wales and eventually (in 1666) became the property of Edward, Earl of Clarendon — was pulled down in 1809.
12 Bachrach, A. G. H. (Sir Constantine Huygens and Britain 1596-1687 (Leiden, 1962), p. 125 Google Scholar) interprets Booth’s phrase ‘cierlijk betimmert’ as meaning decorative half-timbering. However, in the seventeenth century the Dutch term ‘Timmeragie’ usually meant ‘building’ or ‘structure’ (cf. Hexham, op. cit.). This is borne out by Booth’s watercolour which shows no sign of half-timbering (see above, n. 10).