Westmin-
ster becomes
the usual
place for
parliaments.
Westmin-
ster the seat
of govern-
ment.
Interest of
the old
parliament
houses.
396 Constitutional History. [chap.
hall which now survives should be only one of the bed-chambers1.
At AVestminster Henry I held his councils2, and Stephen is
said to have founded the chapel of his patron saint3 within the
palace. Although the courts continued to attend on the king,
they like him rested, when they did rest, at Westminster ; there
was the certain place where, according to the great charter, the
common pleas were to be held when they ceased to follow the
king4 ; there the annual audits of the exchequer were already
settled. Although Henry II held his more solemn councils in
a more central place, and where there was more room for the
camps of the barons to be collected round him, he frequently
met both clergy and baronage there ; the clergy in the abbey,
the barons in the hall, found their proper council chamber.
From the beginning of the reign of Henry III the custom seems
to have acquired the sanctity of law ; he rebuilt the abbey and
added largely to the palace, and by his devotion to the memory
of the Confessor professed himself, if he did not prove himself,
the heir of the national tradition. So well established was the
rule, that in the troubled times which followed the legislation
of Oxford the king avoided Westminster, thinking himself
safer at S. Paul’s or in the Tower, and the barons refused to
attend the king at the Tower according to his summons, insisting
that they should meet at the customary place at Westminster
and not elsewhere 5. The next reign saw the whole of the
administrative machinery of the government permanently settled
in and around the palace ; and thus from the very first intro-
duction of representative members the national council had its
regular home at Westminster. There, with a few casual ex-
ceptions, to be noticed hereafter, all the properly constituted
parliaments of England have been held.
413. The ancient palace of AVestminster, of which the most
important parts, having survived until the fire of 1834 and the
construction of the New Houses of Parliament, were destroyed
in 1852, must have presented a very apt illustration of the
1 Stow’s London, ed. Strype, bk. vi. p. 47. ’ Klor. Wig. λ.li. xι02.
‘ Mon. Angl. vi. 1348. i Art. 17.
s Ann. Dunst. p. 217.
XX.] Palace of TFestminster. 397
history of the Constitution which had grown up from its early
simplicity to its full strength within those venerable walls1. It
was a curious congeries of towers, halls, churches, and chambers.
As the administrative system of the country had been developed
largely from the household economy of the king, the national
palace had for its kernel the king’s court, hall, chapel, and
chamber. It had gathered in and incorporated other buildings Historical
that stood around it ; successive generations had added new Wastmin-
wings, built towers, and dug storehouses. As time went on, ster'
every apartment changed its destination : the chamber became
a council room, the banquet hall a court of justice, the chapel
a hall of deliberation; but the continuity of the historical
building was complete, the changes were but signs of growth
and of the strength that could outlive change. Almost every
part of the palace had its historical hold on the great kings of
the past. In the Painted Chamber Edward the Confessor had
died ; the little hall or White Hall was believed to be the
newly-fashioned hall of his palace ; the Great Hall, the grandest
work of sovereign power, was begun by William Rufus and
completed by Richard II. The chapel of S. Stephen was begun
by Stephen, rebuilt by Edward I, and made by Edward III the
most perfect example of the architecture of his time. The Plan of the
ancient Exchequer buildings stood east and west of the entrance buιldulgs∙
of the Great Hall ; the Star Chamber in the south-eastern
corner of the court that extended in front of the Hall. The
King’s Bench was held at the south end of the Hall itself. The
more impoɪtant of the parliamentary buildings lay south and
east of the Hall. To the south-east, and at right angles with
the Hall, the church of S. Stephen ran down to the river : at
right angles to the church, separated from the Great Hall by
a vestibule, was the lesser or White Hall ; south and east of the
White Hall and parallel with S. Stephen’s chapel was the
Painted Chamber, or Chamber of S. Edward; and at right
angles to it again was the king’s Great Chamber, the White
Chamber, or Chamber of the Parliament. Beyond this was the
1 See Brayley and Britton, History of the Ancient Palace of West-
minster, and Smith’s Antiquities of Westminster.