CHAPTER XIII. WESTMINSTER HALL. Its Erector - The Hall for the Coronation and Banquetings of the English Kings - Extraordinary Scenes and Remarkable Trials Which Have Occurred There from the Time of William Rufus Till the Present Day. Westminster HALL is perhaps the most interesting apartment in Europe; to an Englishman it is unquestionably so. Who is there, indeed, whose philosophy is so cold, or whose heart is so dead to every poetical or romantic feeling, as to be able to cross, without deep emotion, the threshold of the colossal banqueting-room of the Norman kings, associated as it is in our minds with so many scenes of gorgeous splendour, so many events of tragical interest? Here our early monarchs sat personally in judgment on their subjects; here, on its vastest scale, was displayed the rude but magnificent hospitality of the Middle Ages; here a long line of sovereigns - the Norman, the Tudor, the Plantagenet, and the Stuart have sat at their gorgeous coronation banquets; here Edward the Third embraced his gallant son, when the "sable warrior" returned from the bloody field of Poictiers conducting a monarch as his captive; and here were the trial-scenes of the young and accomplished Essex, the stately Strafford, and the ill-fated Charles the First! Westminster Hall, it is almost needless to remark, was originally erected by William Rufus, to serve as a banqueting-hall to the palace of the Confessor. It was completed in 1099, in which year we find him keeping his court beneath its roof. "In this year," writes Matthew Paris, "King William, on returning from Normandy into England, held, for the first time, his court in the new hall at Westminster. Having entered to inspect it, with a large military retinue, some persons remarking that it was too large, and larger than it should have been, the king replied that 'it was not half so large as it should have been,' and that it was only a bedchamber in comparison with the building which he intended to make." This same year, according to Stow, William Rufus kept his Whitsuntide in the palace of Westminster, and feasted in his new banquetinghall "very royally." Henry the First, King Stephen, and Henry the Second were severally crowned in the abbey of Westminster, and doubtless kept their coronation feasts in the old hall. Here also Henry, the eldest son of Henry the Second, was crowned in the lifetime of his father, and the banquet in Westminster Hall, which followed, is rendered not a little |