seen. last Tudor style, were not completed before the middle of the reign of James I.; so that it may be said to have been practised until the days of Inigo Jones, in whose early works it may be traced. "This fashion," says Dallaway, " of building enormous houses was er. tended to that period, and even to the civil war. Audley Inn, Hatfield, Charlton, Wiits, and particularly Wollaton, are those in which the best architecture of that age may be Others of the nobility, deserting their baronial residences, indulged themselves in a rivalship in point of extent and grandeur of their country-houses, which was, of course, followed by opulent merchants, the founders of new families Sir Baptist Hickes, the king's mercer (afterwards ennobled ), built Campden House, Gloucestershire, which was scarcely inferior to Hatfield, afterwards burnt down. There is scarcely a county in England which cannot boast of having once contained similar edifices; a very few are stil. inhabited; others may be traced by their ruins, or remembered by the oldest villagers, who can confirm the tradition; and the sites, at least, of others are pointed out by descriptions as having existed within the memory of man." 446. The following is a list of some of the principal palatial houses finished before 1600. Others of the reign of Elizabeth's successors will hereafter be noticed. Of so many of them are the names of the architects undetermined, though many are assigned to those we have already mentioned, that we shall not attempt to assign a column to the artists in question, for fear of misleading our readers. 447. Relative to Osterley, in the above table, a curious anecdote has been preserved by Fuller, in his Worthies of Middlesex. Queen Elizabeth, when visiting its magnificent merchant, the owner, observed to him that the court ought to have been divided by a wall. He immediately collected so many artificers, that before the queen had risen the next morning, says the historian, a wall had been actually erected. 448. Many of these houses possessed terraces of imposing grandeur, which were connected by broad or double flights of steps, with balustrades, whereof, if we may judge from Winstanley's print of Wimbledon, the seat of Sir Edward Cecil, it was a very fine example. The following extracts from the parliamentary survey of it in 1649 will convey some notion of its extent. "The scite of this manor-house being placed on the side slipp of a rising grownde, renders it to stand of that height, that betwixt the basis of the brick wall of the lower court, and the hall door of the sayd manor-house, there are five several ascents, consisting of three score and ten stepps, which are distinguished in a very graceful manner. The platforms were composed of Flanders brick, and the stepps of freestone, very well wrought. On the ground floor was a room called the stone gallery, 108 foot long, pillared and arched with gray marble." The ceiling of the hall "was of fret or parge work, in the middle whereof was fixed one well-wrought landskip, and round the same, in convenient distances, seven other pictures in frames, as ornaments to the whole roome; the floor was of black and white marble." 449. As we have above observed, the Elizabethan style is a mixture of Gothic and Italian. It is characterised by orders very inaccurately and rudely profiled; by arcades whose openings are often extravagantly wide, their height not unfrequently running up into the entablaThe columns on the piers are almost universally on pedestals, and are often banded in courses of circular or square blocks at intervals of their height; when square, they are constantly decorated with prismatic raisings, in imitation of precious stones, a species of ture. ornament which is of very frequent recurrence. Nothing like unbroken entablature appear; all is frittered away into small parts, especially in scrolls for the reception of in criptions, which, at their extremities, are voluted and curled up, like so many pieces c scorched leather. All these ec centricities are so concentrate in their sepulchral monuments that no better insight into th leading principles of the styl can be afforded than an exampl from Westminster Abbey, her given in the monument of Queer Elizabeth herself (fig. 205.) In this it will be seen that the taste is cumbrous and confused; and to add to the anomalies, the figures were coloured, and the different sorts of marbles and alabasters of numberless hues. The general composition consists in a large altar tomb under an open arcade, with a rich and complicated entablature. The columns are usually of black or white marble, of the Doric or Corinthian order. Small pyramidal figures, whose sides were richly veneered with variously coloured pieces, disposed in ornamented squares or circles supporting globes, are of continual occurrence. Armorial bearings in their various colours were introduced to excess. When the monument is placed against a wall, which is more usually the case, the plan was accommodated to it, and the alcove with its columns universally retained. Among the best examples are those of Thomas Ratcliffe Earl of Sussex at Boreham in Essex, to cost 1500l, and of his countess in Westminster Abbey; of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester at Warwick; and of Henry Carey Lord Hunsdon in Westminster Abbey. Fig. 205. QUEEN ELIZABETH'S MONUMENT. 450. It seems droll in this age, when throughout Europe the principles of good taste in architecture are so well understood, that fashion, induced by the cupidity and ignorance of upholsterers and decorators, -the curses of the art,- should again sanction an adoption of the barbarous forms and unmeaning puerilities which it might be supposed Jones and Wren had, by their example, consigned to a merited oblivion. We fear our warning voice will do little to suppress the rage till its cycle is completed. We have, in the prolongation of the subject, sacrificed our own feelings to the rage in the present day for designs of this class, and have assigned to it a far longer description than it deserves. The wretched cockney imitations of it perpetrated for retired shopkeepers in the insignificant villas of the suburbs of the metropolis, and occasionally for the amusement of country gentlemen a little more distant, as well as the use of what is called Gothic, appear to us in no other light than mockeries of a style which is repudiated by the manners of the nineteenth century. The style called Elizabethan we consider quite as unworthy of imitation as would be the adoption in the present day of the model of the ships of war, with their unwieldly and topheavy poops, which encountered the Armada, in preference to the beautiful and compact form of a well-moulded modern frigate. SECT. VII. JAMES L. TO ANNE. 451. The first of the reigns that heads this section has, in some measure, been anticipated in our notice of Elizabethan architecture, which it was impossible to keep altogether distinct from the following reign. The angular and circular bay windows now disappeared entirely, and were supplanted by large square ones, of very large dimensions in their height, unequally divided by transoms, and placed in lengthened rows, so as to form leading features in the several stories of the building. Battlements were now entirely omitted and the general effect of the pile became one of massive solidity, broken by a square turre loftier than those at the angles. The houses built in the reign of James I. are deficient in the picturesque beauty found in those of his predecessors. Many of them were finished by the architects named in the last section, and they were on a larger scale than even those of the age of Elizabeth. Audley Inn in 1616, Hatfield in 1611, and Charlton House in 1 Wiltshire for Sir Henry Knevett, were, perhaps, the best specimens. The house at Campden, Gloucestershire, built by Sir Baptist Hickes, and which was burned down during the civil wars, consisted of four fronts, the principal one being towards the garden, upon the ground terrace; at each angle was a lateral projection of some feet, with spacious bay windows; in the centre a portico, with a series of the columns of the five orders (as in the schools at Oxford), and an open corridor. The parapet was finished with pediments of a capricious taste, and the chimneys were twisted pillars with Corinthian capitals. A very capacious dome issued from the roof, which was regularly illuminated for the direction of travellers during the night. This immense building was enriched with friezes and entablatures, most profusely sculptured; it is reported to have been erected at the expense of 29,000L, and to have occupied, with its offices, a site of eight acres." 452. The use of the orders became more general. In Glamorganshire, at Beaupré Castle (1600), which has a front and porch of the Doric order, we find a composition ineluding that just named, the Ionic and the Corinthian, wherein the capitals and columns are accurately designed and executed. The following table exhibits some of the principal houses of the period: House. Architect. Date. County. Founder. Present 453. Under James, the pride and magnificence of the aristocracy was as equally dis played in the sumptuous monuments erected to the memory of the departed as in their stately palaces; and we can scarcely point to a county in England whose parish churches do not attest the fact by the gorgeous tombs that exist in villages where the mansions of those thus commemorated have not long since passed from the memory of man. A year's rental of an estate, and that frequently under testamentary direction, was often squandered in the sepulchral monument of the deceased lord of a manor. 454. In the reign of James I. properly commences the career of Inigo Jones, to which we hasten with delight, as indicating the dawn of true architecture (for the Gothic had irretrievably passed away) in England. It resembles the arrival of a traveller at an oasis in the desert, after a parching and toilsome journey. "Jones, if a table of fame," says Walpole, "like that in the Tatler, were to be formed for men of real and indisputable genius in every country, would save England from the disgrace of not having her representative among the arts. She adopted Holbein and Vandyck, she borrowed Rubens, she produced Inigo Jones. Vitruvius drew up his grammar, Palladio showed him the practice, Rome displayed a theatre worthy his emulation, and King Charles was ready to encourage, employ, and reward his talents. This is the history of Inigo Jones as a genius." Generally speaking, we are not admirers of Walpole, who often sacrificed truth to fancy, and the character of an artist to a prettily-turned period; hence we are disinclined to concur in his triticisms without many qualifications; but in this case he has so well expressed our own feelings, that we regret we cannot add force to the observations in which we so full concur. 455. Inigo Jones was the son of a clothworker, and was born about 1572. From th most probable accounts he appears to have been apprenticed to a joiner, in which state h was, from some accounts, discovered by the Earl of Arundel, from others by William Ear of Pembroke, and by one or other of these noblemen sent to Italy, rather, however, accord ing to Walpole, to study the art of painting, than that of architecture, for the former of which the author named says, Nature appears not to have fitted him, inasmuch as "he dropped the pencil, and conceived Whitehall." But our own belief is, that though he might have after. wards been patronised by both the noblemen above mentioned, he owed this part of hi education to neither of them; for, considering that at his first visit to Italy, before 1605, Lord Pembroke was but just of age, and that Lord Arundel was somewhat younger, there is no great probability that either of them thus assisted him in his studies on the Continent. 456. Of his employment as an architect nothing can be traced previous to the visit of James I. to the University of Oxford, in 1605, at which time he was thirty-three years old; and then, according to Leland (Collectanea, App. vol. vi. p. 647.), "They" (the University)" hired one Mr. Jones, a great traveller, who undertook to further them with rare devices, but performed little to what was expected. He had for his pains, I have constantly heard, 50l. ;" from which it is certain that his earliest visit to Italy was before 1605. At Venice he became acquainted with the works of Palladio; and there, as Walpole observes, " learned how beautifully taste may be exerted on a less theatre thar. the capital of an empire." In this city his reputation was so great, that Christian IV. appointed him his architect, though of the buildings erected by him in Denmark we know nothing. In this country's capital, however, he was found by James, and by his Queen (Anne) was removed from Copenhagen to Scotland, in the quality of her architect. Prince Henry he was employed in the same capacity, and about this time had the grant in reversion of surveyor general of the works. On the untimely and lamented death of that prince, he once more visited Italy, where he perfected his taste and ripened his judgment. It appears more than probable that it was previous to his second journey that he designed those of his buildings that partake of a bastard style. These buildings, however, are such as could, under the circumstances, have been designed only by a great master in a state of transition from one style to another; such, for instance, are the north and south sides of the quadrangle at St. John's College, Oxford, in which he seems to have copied all the faults of the worst examples of his great master Palladio; still the composition is so picturesque, that, though reluctantly, we cannot avoid admiring it. In the garden front of By Fig 206 GARDEN FRONT OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD, (1631-5). the same college (fig. 206.), notwithstanding its impurity, there is a breadth and grandeur which subdue criticism, and raise our admiration; and we by no means subscribe to Horace Walpole's dictum, that " Inigo's designs of that period have a littleness of parts and a weight of ornament." Previous to his second return to England, the surveyor's place had fallen in, and finding the office in debt, he prevailed, as Walpole observes, with an air of Roman disinterestedness, and showing that architecture was not the only thing he had learned in Rome, on the comptroller and paymaster of the office, to give up, as he did, all the profits of the office till the arrears were cleared. 457. By the Fadera, vol. xviii. p. 99., we find that there was issued to him, in conjunction with the Earl of Arundel and others, a commission to prevent the building on new foundations within two miles of London and the palace of Westminster; and in 1620 he was, if possible, more uselessly employed by James I. in guessing, for it was no more, who were the builders of Stonehenge. For this last, the necessary preliminary information had not even dawned, although Walpole, in his usual off-hand manner, loses not, in alluding to it, the opportunity of displaying his own dreadful ignorance on the subject. (See Chap. II. Sect. II., where this monument has been examined.) In the year last named, Jones was one of the commissioners for the repair of old St. Paul's, though the repairs were not commenced till 1633, in which year Laud, then Bishop of London, laid the first stone, and Inigo Jones the fourth. Our architect was now too much disinclined to Gothic to bend his genius to Front to PLAN OF WHITEHALL. |