ST. EDWARD'S OR THE PAINTED CHAMBER IN THE OLD PALACE OF WESTMINSTER This historic place, the bedchamber and treasury of the Saxon Kings, the curia regis of the Normans, the council-room of the Plantagenets, the hall of assembly of the early Parliaments, was for five centuries the actual seat and centre of the English government. In it Edward the Confessor died, Simon de Montfort was married, the victories of Crecy and Agincourt were announced, the death warrant of Charles I. was signed, Chatham lay in state. From Earl Godwin to Earl Grey every First Minister of the Crown has played his part within its walls. Eighty feet long, thirty wide and forty high, it lay east and west from the river garden to Old Palace Yard, across the Lords' lobby of to-day. Its noble proportions, the frescoes and tapestries that adorned it, the traditions which it enshrined, had made it one of the marvels of mediæval England. After standing for eight hundred years and surviving the fire of 1834, it was pulled down to make way for the present Houses of Parliament. Frontispiece. |