16

THE PALACE OP WESTMINSTER.

until Sir Christopher Wren repaired the House, and fitted it up with wainscoting, in the time ofQueen Anne .

Mr. Speaker Onslow (1566) was said to have remembered tapestry hanging up, and that upon everyNew Parliament a fresh set used to he provided; on which occasion the housekeeper claimed the old onesas a perquisite of office. The hangings, therefore, could not lay claim to much antiquity.

Very few alterations were made from this time until the Union with Ireland , in 1800, when thenumber of Members increasing, the House was ordered to be enlarged. On examination of the originalside walls between the piers, they were found to be three feet thick, and the requisite enlargement waseffected by taking down the entire side walls, except the buttresses, and by erecting, on the samefoundation, walls of one foot thick, which ranged with the external extremities of the walls, so as to giveone seat in each of the recesses thus formed, by throwing back part of the walls. A gallery ran alongthe west end, and the north and south sides were supported by slender iron pillars, crowned withgilt Corinthian capitals: the whole house was lined with oak. The Speaker’s Chair stood at somedistance from the wall, towards the upper end of the apartment. It was slightly ornamented withgilding, having the King’s Arms at the top.

Before the Speaker’s Chair, at a small interval, was a table, at which the Clerks of the Housesat when Parliament met. On the table the Speaker’s mace was placed, unless the House was inCommittee, when it was put under the table, and the Speaker then left the Chair. Between the tableand the bar was an area, in which a temporary bar was placed when witnesses were examined. Therewere five rows of seats on each side of the House, and at both ends, upon which the Members sat. Theseat on the floor, on the Speaker’s right hand, was called the ‘ Treasury Bench,’ on which the chiefMembers of the Administration took their places; and the opposite side was occupied by the leadingMembers of the opposition. The gallery on each side was appropriated also for Members, and thefront gallery for strangers; the last seat being reserved for the reporters. The table is reportedto have been the identical one on which the mace lay when Cromwell entered the House, and commanded“ that bauble to be taken away.”

The Chapel , as completed by Edward III. , has always been represented of so much beauty, as tohave made it a matter of great regret by antiquarians that it should have undergone any alteration, andbeen defaced to convert it into a House of Commons. When the inner walls were unmasked for theenlargement before alluded to, by removing the wainscot for that purpose, a discovery was made of manyworks of art which had adorned the old Chapel: the interior of the walls and roof were curiously wroughtand decorated, with a profusion of gilding and painting. It appears to have been divided into compartments,of gothic shape, each having a border of gilt roses. At the east end, including perhaps a third of thelength of the whole Chapel , which part was most probably enclosed for the altar, the entire walls androof were covered with gilding and paintings, and presented, even in the mutilated state they then displayedduring the alterations, a superb and unique remnant of the fine arts as they then existed.

Hr. Charles Gower, a physician belonging to Middlesex Hospital, communicated a knowledge of