1 These two excerpts are from John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, ed. Scattergood, John (Penguin, 1983), pp. 246–78Google Scholar; and The Life of Cardinal Wolsey by George Cavendish, to which is added Thomas Churchyard's Tragedy of Wolsey(London, 1885), pp. 267–84.Google Scholar

2 For a comprehensive discussion of the palace's early history, see my forthcoming doctoral thesis, ‘An Archaeological Reconstruction of Thomas Wolsey's Hampton Court Palace’ (University of Reading).

3 Wolsey's works accounts are in the Public Record Office, E 36/235, pp. 687–834; Henry VIII's are throughout PRO, E 36/235–45.

4 The first curator of the palace, Edward Jesse, wrote a guide book on Hampton Court published in 1839 to complement the opening of the state apartments to the public. A Summer's Day at Hampton Court, 2nd edn (London, 1840), told the visitor that ‘in the middle court is Wolsey's hall …’ (p. 40)Google Scholar. The attribution was probably habitual, as indeed some eighteenth-century accounts refer to it as such. But Jesse offered a notable point of comparison: ‘The hall of Christ Church, Oxford, built also by Wolsey, is said to be more chaste and impressive, although many persons give the preference to that of Hampton Court’ (p. 42). In 1885, the first volume of Ernest Law's The History of Hampton Court Palace (London) tackled the Tudor period. Based on original sources and with a barrister's eye for detail, Law furthered Jesse's observations, noting that the hall at Hampton Court and Wolsey's hall of 1525–29 at Oxford are ‘almost exact counterparts and palpably by the same architect… their roofs and windows are almost exactly alike’ (p. 155, n. 3). Law's notion of a consistent designer for both buildings was not developed, perhaps because of the array of the royal badges of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn on Hampton Court's hammerbeam roof structure, which are firm evidence of royal patronage at least three years after Wolsey's death, and consistent with Henry's works accounts for the hall from 1533–34 which Law transcribed. Ultimately, Law's book was not a detailed archaeological examination of the building. Instead, he reasoned that ‘Wolsey's hall, which, though doubtless a fine and spacious room enough, yet did not satisfy Henry's regal requirements and more gorgeous taste. The whole size and proportions of the new hall were to be on a scale of grandeur and magnificence suitable to a place which had now become one of the king's residences’ (p. 153). Simon Thurley has recently done a great deal to bring the architecture of Tudor palaces into focused debate. In his account of the Henrician development of the palace in this journal, he ‘tentatively concluded’ that HALL 1 was not rebuilt by Wolsey. ‘Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court: a Reconstruction of the Tudor Palace', Architectural History, 31 (1988), pp. 1–51, 1 Plans A-F (pp. 1, 10)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thurley's book The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (London, 1993)Google Scholar also approached Hampton Court as a royal, rather than an episcopal, palace. Here, he stressed the importance of the Henrician hall more forcefully, following Law's rationale that monarchy were inevitably the ultimate arbiters of magnificence. This idea gained momentum from the conclusions of the 1973–74 archaeological excavation of the late fifteenth-century HALL 1, which suggested Wolsey had retained and inhabited this structure; see below for further discussion.

5 The axonometric line drawing of Hampton Court as at c. 1600 by Hart, Daphne for The History of the Kings Works (cited hereafter as HKW), IV: 1485–1660, pt II, ed. Colvin, Howard (London, 1982)Google Scholar, remains the most reliable visual reconstruction of the Tudor palace in its fully developed state.

6 Colvin, , HKW, iv, pt II, p. 134.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 134, n. 5.

8 For a full account of the significance of this reconstruction of Wolsey's hall, see Jonathan Foyle, “Thomas Wolsey's Hampton Court as a Roman Cardinal's Palace’ (forthcoming).

9 Wolsey already had experience of Northern France as chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, and of the Low Countries in ambassadorial duties. An indication of his burgeoning status is the fact that he provided himself with tents of luxurious size for the campaign of 1513. See Cruickshank, C. G., Army Royal: Henry VIITs Invasion of France 1513 (London, 1969), p. 45.Google Scholar

10 See discussion in n. 17, below.

11 The title page of the accounts kept by Laurence Stubbs, Wolsey's paymaster, is dated 20 January 1514 (PRO, E 36/235, p. 687), and the first page of the accounts proper is identically dated (PRO, E 36/235, p. 689). The dating is adjusted to the Gregorian calendar throughout the main text.

12 Samman, Neil, ‘The Henrician Court during Cardinal Wolsey's Ascendancy c. 1514–1529’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Wales, 1988), p. 202, Table A.Google Scholar

13 The dig was led by John Dent. It remains unpublished, but site cards, notes, and some photographs are stored in Apartment 25, Hampton Court Palace. Daphne Ford made a series of plan drawings from these sources in 1997. Work commenced on 12 November 1973, and what became identified as the post-1450 hall was discovered on Day 1. Even at this stage, its chalk footings were considered to have been Wolsey's. By 3 January 1974, there were further discussions on the junction of the supposedly Henrician north and south walls with the chalk footings. Brian Doughty and Allan Clark agreed ‘that massive chalk foundations are earliest but not that they were superseded by a flimsy building before Wolsey built (?) a hall. Brick foundations were agreed as Henry VIII’. A sketch of 12 December 1973 shows that what were accepted as Henry's brick foundations were built immediately atop the chalk footings for the north wall of the west wing, on a levelling course of tile. Any discussion that Wolsey might have built these brick foundations over the chalk footings was not recorded. It was seen that a lowering of the internal floor by several inches involved chopping the top off the chalk blocks within the area of the present beer cellar: it was not firmly identified when this happened, whether as an initial part of a post-HALL 1 rebuilding or as a subsequent change of level.

14 Thurley, , Royal Palaces, p. 120.Google Scholar

15 The closest English comparisons for first-floor apartments are much earlier than 1515. They are found in military architecture, self-evidently elevated for defence (e.g. after Colchester Castle; White Tower, Tower of London c. 1070S–90S). Otherwise, linked first-floor ‘apartments’ in a palatial context consist of just a hall and solar and chapel/oratory (e.g. Bishop's Palace, St David's, late thirteenth century). Acton Burnell (c. 1284–93) represents a combination of these types. See also Kenilworth and Windsor in the late fourteenth century.

16 The attribution and dimensions of this hall have been taken from Thurley, Simon, Whitehall Palace (London, 1999) pp. 4–5, 8–10.Google Scholar

17 British Library, Cotton MS, Claudius E VI, fols 137/139r-v and fols 138/140r-v (this manuscript has recently been repaginated, all references are here given as ‘old/new’ pagination). The date of this lease is problematic: Colvin, , HKW, IV, pt II, p. 127 Google Scholar, stated that Wolsey obtained his lease in June 1514. Thurley gave a date for the lease and commencement of building operations as both 1515 (‘Henry VIII and Hampton Court’, p. 1) and 1514 (Royal Palaces, p. 87). These differing dates need to be resolved, as they infer two scenarios: either Wolsey took the lease as Bishop of Lincoln and Tournai, or as Archbishop of York. A reading of the Knights Hospitallers’ leases in BL, Cotton MS, Claudius E VI, shows that they customarily chose three dates for the terminus post quern of leases: 11 January (St Salvius’ Day), 24 April (St Mellitus’ Day), and 24 June (Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist). The earlier lease of Hampton Court to Sir Giles Daubeney in 1505, upon whose terminology Wolsey's lease is based, is dated 28 July of that year (BL Cotton MS, Claudius E VI, fols 6/7r-v, 7/9r). It too is backdated to 24 June: ‘fro the fest of the Nativite of Saint John Baptist last past before the date herof…’ (ibid., fol. 6/8r). Wolsey's decision to take the lease may have been made at any time prior to its signing. The Hospitallers’ use of conventionalized dates means we cannot hope to ascertain the moment of Wolsey's decision to remodel Hampton Court from the dates given on the lease. However, it should be borne in mind that between June and January 1514/5, a median of autumn 1514 coincides with his appointment as Archbishop of York in that September, which may have prompted his decision to take the lease on the manor. It is fair to assume that the lead in to signing a prepared lease would have taken perhaps a month or two. Wolsey would have needed to organize his finance, agree development plans, and assemble a corps of workmen, who began on 20 January 1514/5 (PRO, E 36/235, p. 687).

18 BL, Cotton MS, Claudius E VI, fols 138/140r.

19 Ibid., fols 137/139r.

20 Fox insisted to Wolsey on 24 August 1519 that whilst Hampton Court was under construction, ‘the more and the longar ye doo use it, the mor comfort shall it be to me’. Cited in P. S., and Allen, H. M. (eds), Letters of Richard Fox 1486–1527 (Oxford, 1929), pp. 121–22.Google Scholar

21 PRO, E 36/235, pp. 687–834.

22 Ibid., pp. 699ff.

23 Ibid., p. 834.

24 Ibid., pp. 693ff.

25 PRO, E 101/474, p. 7.

26 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England, The City of Oxford (London, 1939), p. xxiv Google Scholar, lists 'John Lubbins and Thomas Redmayne’ as master masons of Christ Church. This seems to be in error, mistaking Henry for Thomas. Harvey, John, A Biographical Dictionary of English Medieval Architects, rev. edn (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 246–49Google Scholar, proposes that Thomas Redmayne (II) was related to Henry Redman, but shows it is Henry who appears at Cardinal College. In Wolsey's Hampton Court accounts for 1515, masons William Badman and John Gibson were paid a mileage allowance for travelling from Oxford to Hampton Court (PRO, E 36/235, p. 772). It is possible that such journeys were made to negotiate supplies of stone, to impress masons, or conceivably to take references from other buildings.

27 PRO, E 36/235, p. 777.

28 Ibid., p. 738.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., p. 767.

31 Ibid., p. 788.

32 Ibid., p. 789. These windows were reassembled and trimmed of their internal mullion mouldings to conform to the cornice of the battened ceiling installed in 1535.

33 Ibid., p. 769.

34 Ibid., p. 789.

35 Ibid., p. 817.

36 Ibid.

37 George Cavendish estimated the members of Wolsey's household at ‘abought the Somme of fyve hundred parsons accordyng to his chekker rolle’. Cavendish, George, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Sylvester, Richard, Early English Text Society 243 (Oxford, 1959), p. 21, lines 16–18.Google Scholar

38 The most recent published attribution of Hampton Court's oriel window was by Thurley, , Whitehall Palace, p. 30 Google Scholar, who stated that it was ‘Henry VIII's bay window’.

39 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, cat. no. LIV II.bv.

40 Report by Robin Sanderson submitted to Historic Royal Palaces Agency.

41 Wolsey seems to have built an oriel in 1528 for his new hall at York Place, if the term ‘in building’ allied to ‘repair[ing] and furnish[ing]’ indeed equates with ‘new’ (see Thurley, Whitehall Palace, pp. 27–29). The surviving documents for the hall and the record of its partial footings discovered in the 1930s may not be enough to provide confirmation for this, though, and Wolsey's work may merely have involved alterations to George Neville's late fifteenth-century hall on precisely the same site, which is shown to have been the same width as Wolsey's hall (ibid., figs 21,27,38). Also, Neville's earlier building apparently featured an oriel of ‘8 by 13 ft’ (ibid, p. 8). The great size of this window registers ‘the obvious defect’ of his hall's inadequate scale a less convincing motive for Wolsey to have rebuilt it (ibid., p. 27). Indeed, Thurley provides the internal dimensions of Wolsey's 1528 York Place oriel as a smaller 6 ft 6 in. width against a length of 10 ft (ibid., p. 30). Thurley then compares this new oriel with that at Hampton Court (however, attributed to Henry VIII [ibid., p. 29]) and the one at Cardinal College. No masonry fragments from the 1528 York Place oriel vault have been recovered. If, however, Thurley's diagnosis of phasing is correct, the 1528 York Place oriel must have projected rather deeper than a double-square plan, whilst Hampton Court is a double-square, whereas the Cardinal College vault is slightly shallower than a double-square. It therefore stands to reason that these oriel vaults, whilst possibly similar, and possibly all Wolseyan, must all have been differently configured.

42 This phenomenon of straight-edged fans, which would seem to compromise the geometric purity of the form, is not symptomatic of a mistake in setting out but a frequent aspect of the design which serves to accommodate bay units narrower than the broad semicircular spread of a fan would inherently dictate. These structural practicalities make it more usual to find this narrowing device in large high vaults rather than small vaults and those beneath towers which tend to conform to a square plan.

43 There is no known will nor other detail on the death of Lebons, but he was paid at Cardinal College until 24 October 1529 and no documents relating to him are known after this date. Harvey, , Biographical Dictionary, p. 173 Google Scholar. Redman's monumental brass in Brentford Church records that he was ‘deceased July 10 1528'. Ibid., p. 248.

44 William Vertue lived at Kingston upon Thames, across the river from Hampton Court's Home Park. He was buried in Kingston Church, though any monument he may have had is no longer evident. His will is transcribed in Harvey, John, Gothic England (London, 1947), Appendix V (iv), pp. 185–86.Google Scholar

45 There has been a considerable history of debate on the attribution of the vaults of Henry VII's chapel. Robert Vertue, Robert Janyns, and John Lebons were listed in a 1506 document in connection with the design of a monument to Henry VII within the chapel, an important commission as it was the focus of the entire building. In the absence of original works accounts for the construction of the chapel itself, Bond, Francis, Westminster Abbey (London, 1909)Google Scholar, and Lethaby, W. R., Westminster Abbey Re-examined (London, 1925)Google Scholar, both attributed it to Robert Vertue. Debate has since centred on these names, with the more recent attribution of the vaults to William Vertue at c. 1510. See Webb, Geoffrey, Architecture in Britain: The Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 200 Google Scholar; and Harvey, John, The Medieval Architect (London, 1972), p. 164 Google Scholar. Harvey went on to propose that William Vertue ‘must have had charge (of the chapel) since his brother Robert's death in 1506’ (Biographical Dictionary, p. 307). See Colvin, , HKW, in (1975), p. 214 Google Scholar; Leedy, Walter, ‘The Design of the Vaulting of Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster: A Reappraisal’, Architectural History, 18 (1975), pp. 5–11 Google Scholar; and Wilson, Christopher, ‘The Designer of Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey’, in The Reign of Henry VII, Transactions of the Harlaxton Symposium 1993, ed. Thompson, Benjamin (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 133–56.Google Scholar

46 Cardinal College's gatehouse (now the base of Tom Tower) has long been acknowledged as derivative of the side chapels from Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster. The link between Redman and Vertue is again directly applicable here, this time involving Lebons.

47 Leedy, Walter C., Fan Vaulting: a Study of Form, Technology, and Meaning (London, 1980), p. 133 Google Scholar, provides the most reliable dating for the vaulting of Bath Abbey, based on the commencement date of an injunction of 9 October 1500, providing for rebuilding funds, and on letters between Bishop King and Sir Reginald Bray in January 1503, which relate that the Vertues had recently visited the Abbey and devised the ‘chancelles’ vaulting.

48 The motif of a tier of cusped circles probably derives from smaller examples in the vaulted canopies of some notable fifteenth-century chantry chapels, such as that of Cardinal Beaufort at Winchester Cathedral.

49 PRO, E 36/235, p. 789.

50 While the Wyngaerde drawing does not show the first-floor window, this is shown as a convincing Tudor design in the early eighteenth-century drawing (Oxford, All Souls, I, fol. 57). For a reproduction, see Allan, Juliet, ‘New Light on William Kent at Hampton Court', Architectural History, 27 (1984), pp. 50–55, Pl. 1b.Google Scholar

51 The main entry stairs are 17 ft 2 in. wide, but have been completely refaced internally so a precise original width cannot be ascertained.

52 This was part of comprehensive Henrician revision of planning in 1534–35. This included building the ‘Haunted Gallery’ and its stairs which served the private closets within the redeveloped west end of the chapel, as well as the wine cellar and the new Watching Chamber above the wine cellar (Fig. 6). A west-east passage was required to the wine cellar from the western ‘Seymour Gate’, where the Board of Greencloth accounted for deliveries of kitchen supplies. This could only be enabled by smashing through Wolsey's north-south kitchen offices. By shortening the servery stairs, the unimpeded corridor could double as a route from a serving place central to both ends of the hall and the new Great Watching Chamber.

53 Undated (c. 1981), Department of the Environment, Ancient Monuments Branch record. Monument no. 125A, drawing AS2/60, recorded by D. Ford, drawn by M. Stoll.

54 Three phases of masonry are visible at the junction of the Wolseyan servery stairs with the north wall of the hall. Phase 1: Stub of Wolsey's servery stairs east wall / north wall of hall beneath present landing; Phase 2: Henrician buttress built against the east face of the east wall of Wolsey's servery stairs in conformity with the new internal dimensions of the 1532–34 hall; Phase 3: Southern half of Wolsey's servery stairs demolished; the east wall of the new stair passage aligned with Henry's buttress and built up to it, evident at this point by change in order of English bond pattern to either side of a straight junction.

55 Cavendish, , Life of Cardinal Wolsey, p. 19, lines 11–12.Google Scholar

56 Before any demolition work on Wolsey's hall began, there came an account for ‘new glass in the louffa upon the Hall’. PRO, E 36/239, p. 108.

57 PRO, E 36/241, pp. 465, 476. This date is unreliable, as the roof timbers were apparently already dismantled by autumn 1530 (PRO, E 36/241, pp. 107,109).

58 ‘The great Wyndow at the Upper Ende of the said Haull ys xiiii lyghts'. PRO, E 36/242, p. 309.

59 Calendar of Slate Papers (Venetian), ed. Brown, Rawdon (London, 1869), in, p. 130.Google Scholar

60 BL, Harleian MS 599, fols 9r ff.

61 See Higgins, A., ‘On the Work of Florentine Sculptors in England in the Early Part of the Sixteenth Century; with Special Reference to the Tombs of Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII', Archaeological Journal, 51 (1894), pp. 129–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Calendar of State Papers (Spanish), further supplement, ed. Mattingly, G. (London, 1947), p. 107.Google Scholar

63 Calendar of State Papers (Spanish), ed. Brown, Rawdon (London, 1873), in, pt i, p. 209 Google Scholar; see Samman, , “The Henrician Court', p. 214, for a discussion.Google Scholar

64 BL, Harleian MS 642, Cap. 77.

65 PRO, E 36/236, p. 41.

66 PRO, E 36/241, p. 107; E 36/241, p. 109; E 36/241, p. 477.

67 PRO, E 36/241, p. 465.

68 The construction of scaffolding is a duplicated account: PRO, E 36/241, p. 107; and E 36/241, p. 463.

69 PRO, E 36/241, p. 485.

70 Law, , History of Hampton Court, Appendix C, p. 344.Google Scholar

71 Mattocks were provided to dig the trenches by October-November 1530. PRO, E 36/241, p. 119; bricklayers were laying in March 1532. PRO, E 36/241, p. 486.

72 PRO, E 36/241, p. 473.

73 ‘Storopys for the great whele that conveyth the tymber up in the Haull'. PRO, E 36/237, p. 544.

74 PRO, E 36/237, p. 30.

75 PRO, E 36/238, p. 51.

76 PRO, E 36/242, p. 49.

77 PRO, E 36/242, p. 309. The Society of Antiquaries holds a drawing of the oriel, possibly showing a few medallions that remained of its glazing for Henry VIII before being taken down for the hall's total re-glazing in 1846; there is no known record of Wolsey's glazing scheme.

78 PRO, E 36/238, p. 384.

79 PRO, E 36/240, p. 565.

80 PRO, E 36/238, p. 202.

81 Glazing with the king's and queen's heraldic motifs was in place by November-December 1534 (PRO, E 36/242, p. 309); the gable walls were pencilled by Christopher Deconson in the same December (PRO, E 36/242, p. 330), but hay had already been burned to produce black pigment for such work a year previously (PRO, E 36/237, p. 296), suggesting the pencilling was done in stages.

82 The present author gave a paper to the Society of Antiquaries on 15 November 2001 explaining the geometric design of Wolsey's palace, and the role of the Great Hall within it as an exercise in Renaissance palatial planning.