Kensington Palace, the birthplace of the Queen being an historical guide to the state rooms, pictures and gardens — Inside the Classic

se were his last articulate words. "Bentinck instantly came to the bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the King's mouth. The lips of the dying man moved, but nothing could be heard. The King took the hand of his earliest friend and pressed it tenderly to his heart. In that moment, no doubt, all that had cast a slight passing cloud over their long pure friendship was forgotten. It was now between seven and eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped for breath. The bishops knelt down and read the commendatory prayer. When it ended William was no more. When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk ribbon. The lords in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary."

=Queen Anne at Kensington Palace.=

Fond as William and Mary had been of Kensington, Queen Anne was even more attached to it still;--and it became her usual residence whenever it was necessary for her to be near the great offices of state. She seems to have remained satisfied with the palace as it had been finished by her predecessors, except for the addition of one or two small rooms "in the little court behind the gallery," perhaps because King William bequeathed to her a debt of upwards of £4,000 for his buildings at Kensington.

She devoted, however, a great deal of care and expense to the improving and enlarging of the Palace gardens--as to which we shall have more to say when we come to describe them. Queen Anne, indeed, was, in this respect, thoroughly English. She loved her plants and flowers, and would spend hours pottering about her gardens at Kensington. The appearance of her gardens will best be seen from our reduced facsimile of Kip's large engraving, published about 1714 in his "Britannia Illustrata." In the right distance is seen that most beautiful building called the "Orangery" or green-house, erected by her orders--which we shall fully describe on a subsequent page.

Besides enlarging the gardens round about the Palace, Queen Anne greatly extended the area of the park-like enclosed grounds attached to Kensington Palace. Mr. Loftie has declared that "neither Queen Anne nor Queen Caroline took an acre from Hyde Park." But this we have found not to be the fact. In an old report on the "State of the Royal Gardens and Plantations at Ladyday, 1713," among the Treasury Papers in the Record Office, there is a distinct reference to "The Paddock joyning to the Gardens, _taken from Hyde Park in 1705_, and stocked with fine deer and antelopes;" and again in another document, dated May 26th in the same year, being a memorial to the Lord High Treasurer from Henry Portman, Ranger of Hyde Park, it is stated that "near 100 acres had been enclosed from the park of Kensington, whereby the profits he had by herbage were much reduced." Later on, in George II.'s reign, in 1729, we find a grant of £200 made to William, Earl of Essex, Ranger of Hyde Park, "in consideration of loss of herbage of that part of the said park which is laid into his Majesty's gardens at Kensington."

=Death of Prince George of Denmark.=

It was at Kensington Palace that Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, at length succumbed, in 1708, to a prolonged illness of gout and asthma. During his last sickness and death, Anne had the "consolation" of the Duchess of Marlborough's "sympathy." Her Grace's deportment, according to an eye-witness, "while the Prince was actually dying, was of such a nature that the Queen, then in the height of her grief, was not able to bear it." She actually forced her way, as Mistress of the Robes, to the poor Prince's deathbed, and only drew into the background when peremptorily ordered by the heart-broken wife to leave the room. After Prince George had breathed his last, she stepped forward again, and when all the others had left, insisted on remaining with poor Anne, who was "weeping and _clapping_ her hands together, and swaying herself backwards and forwards" in an agony of grief. The Queen was at length induced to accede to the Duchess's advice to leave "_that dismal body_" and remove to St. James's.

Two years later, in these very same state rooms of Kensington Palace took place the famous final interview between the Queen and her whilom favourite, also subsequently noticed in our description of "Queen Anne's Private Dining Room."

=Death of Queen Anne.=