" The buildings were rapidly increasing, yet certainly gave
not even a faint idea of its present appearance.
At last Whitehall received our traveller, who passed under one of the
beautiful gates designed by Holbein, and composed of tesselated brick-
work, being the same to which Moniplies had profanely likened the
West-Port of Edinburgh, and entered the ample precincts of the palace
of Whitehall, now full of all the confusion attending improvement. It
was just at the time when James,--little suspecting that he was
employed in constructing a palace, from the window of which his only
son was to pass in order that he might die upon a scaffold before it,--
was busied in removing the ancient and ruinous buildings of De Burgh,
Henry VIII., and Queen Elizabeth, to make way for the superb
architecture on which Inigo Jones exerted all his genius. The king,
ignorant of futurity, was now engaged in pressing on his work; and,
for that purpose, still maintained his royal apartments at Whitehall,
amidst the rubbish of old buildings, and the various confusion
attending the erection of the new pile, which formed at present a
labyrinth not easily traversed.
The goldsmith to the Royal Household, and who, if fame spoke true,
oftentimes acted as their banker,--for these professions were not as
yet separated from each other,--was a person of too much importance to
receive the slightest interruption from sentinel or porter; and,
leaving his mule and two of his followers in the outer-court, he
gently knocked at a postern-gate of the building, and was presently
admitted, while the most trusty of his attendants followed him
closely, with the piece of plate under his arm.
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