On the night of February 23, 1447, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester died suddenly after being arrested for treason. The timing was suspicious. So was the haste with which his body was put on public display, unmarked, to prove he hadn’t been poisoned. Humphrey had been the founder of Greenwich Palace, the man who had built a grand pink brick mansion on the riverside.
And now, in the wake of his death, Margaret of Anjou moved with remarkable speed to claim the house for herself. She changed its name from Bella Court to Placentia, and she remodeled it to her liking. She wanted that house. She wanted it very badly.
It was a pattern that ran through much of Greenwich’s history — power seized, power lost, and power claimed again. The land had been significant long before Humphrey’s time. The Saxons had named it for its green harbor, and there were still small mounds marking where they had buried their dead. The park had been enclosed in 1433 by Humphrey himself.
In the wilderness, the descendants of the deer herds brought in for the royal hunt in 1515 still grazed. Henry VIII brought the park alive through his love of hunting and sport. He organized contests of tilting, wrestling, and sword fights, and he had special seating arranged so the queen and the young ladies of the court could sit and admire his prowess. Greenwich was his birthplace.
As a child and as a young king, he spent most of his time here or at nearby Eltham Palace. He would have crossed the oldest surviving bridge in London to reach the palace, as had many of his predecessors back to the 1400s. Eltham had belonged to Bishop Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror. It was well suited for Norman and medieval monarchs traveling to and from their continental lands.
The palace was originally built by Bishop Beck of Durham in the 1280s, then acquired by Edward II, who gave it to his wife, Isabella. For two centuries, it was one of the largest and most visited royal residences in the country. Edward IV built the Great Hall in the 1470s and extended the site, bringing Eltham to its height. Henry VIII spent most of his childhood there, retreating to a private garden with a bridge across to it, where he could think and discuss matters with his friends.
But in his later life, Henry turned away from Eltham and transferred his allegiance to Greenwich. The palace fell into disrepair, then into major disrepair after the Civil War of the 17th century, when it was acquired by Nathaniel Rich, the regicide. Rich the Rebel, as he was called, stripped the lead off the Great Hall’s roof and dismantled much of the rest of the building. Medieval buildings have checkered histories.
They go from the heights of luxury to being used as pigsties. Eltham was no different. In 1934, Stephen and Virginia Courtauld entered the story. They were looking for a house near London with easy access to the capital, somewhere they could make a garden.
They wanted to design a modern home while retaining as much of the old royal palace as possible. Christopher Wren and what they mistakenly saw as his restoration of Hampton Court were their inspiration. They filled the house with exotic materials and fabrics, creating a stylish interior that became the epitome of the Art Deco era. When Eltham was at its peak, visitors from the capital had to cross Blackheath.
The area took its name not from the victims of the Black Death, as local legend suggests, but from the black peat beneath its surface. It was a notoriously dangerous crossing. Chaucer wrote of being mugged twice on his way to Eltham, and it was probably in the darker areas of the Heath that he met his aggressors. Early activity on the Heath seemed to divide equally between royal pageantry and revolts against the crown.
In 1497, one such revolt led to the only battle ever fought there. The Cornish rebelled against taxation levied by Henry VII for his campaign against the Scottish king, James IV. The Cornishmen marched to London under the leadership of Michael Joseph. At Blackheath, they met the king’s army.
Violent clashes followed. Many Cornishmen were slaughtered, and the rebellion was crushed. There had been another rebellion on the Heath some 50 years earlier, led by Jack Cade. It was fueled by anger at the corrupt government of Henry VI, but also by the mystery surrounding the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the founder of Greenwich Park.
Humphrey had acquired his land in Greenwich in 1427, and over the next decade he obtained licenses — little more than planning permission — from the crown to build his pink brick mansion on the riverside. It must have been a very grand house, though no picture or trace remains. He married a lady named Eleanor Cobham, who was accused of dabbling in the black arts. In crude terms, she was accused of being a witch.
Two priests who had been part of her household, but had been arrested and tortured by Humphrey’s enemies at court, denounced her. They claimed she had been involved in making a wax effigy of her husband’s brother, Henry VI. By calling on the devil’s help, the king’s life could be made to fade as the wax figure melted. She was charged with heresy and witchcraft.
Since her husband was heir to the throne, her actions were doubly treasonable. But her position also meant she could escape the axe. Eleanor was forced to walk through the streets of London barefoot, wearing nothing but a black shift, carrying a two-pound wax taper, which she eventually made as an offering at a church at the end of her route. She was then placed under what we would call house arrest, imprisoned in a succession of castles across the countryside.
Humphrey, very sensibly, did absolutely nothing to help his wife. There was nothing he could have done. If he had moved to help her, he would have been drawn into the net. In 1445, Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou.
Even though Humphrey opposed the match, he met them when they arrived at Greenwich and even lent them his palace for their honeymoon. This was not a good idea. Margaret loved the palace, disliked the Duke, and always got her way. It was a deadly combination.
On the 23rd of February, 1447, Humphrey died following his mysterious arrest for treason. It is thought he must have been poisoned, as great pains were taken to expose his body to the public to show it was unmarked. After his death, Margaret of Anjou moved incredibly quickly to get that house for herself. She changed the name from Bella Court to Placentia and remodeled it.
She wanted that house. She wanted it very much indeed. The palace became a focal point for the future Tudor dynasty. Close links were forged with the local area, and the parish church of St.
Alfege is a possible site for the baptism of Henry VIII in 1491. The medieval church replaced one built previously by the Saxons. The original church was dedicated to Alfege, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was martyred on the spot. When the Danes invaded England in 1011, Alfege was taken prisoner.
He was brought in chains from Canterbury to the fortified village of Greenwich, where the main Danish encampment was on Blackheath. Alphege tried to escape but was recaptured in the boggy marshland. As punishment, the ransom for his release was raised to 51,000 pounds. Alphege told the impoverished English not to pay.
A week later, the Danes were celebrating Easter. In their drunken stupor, they began to pelt and hammer Alphege with bones left over from their feasting. A man named Thrum, who had been secretly converted by Alphege, took pity on the injured archbishop and administered the final blow with an axe. A church in his memory has stood there ever since.
The building that stands today was the first church built by Hawksmoor, and the first built under the Fifty New Churches Act of 1712. The act was instigated by Queen Anne to accommodate a growing London population. It was fortunate that the church was so high on the list, because after church number twelve, the building work ground to a complete halt. By the time of Queen Anne, the great palace by the riverside had been and gone.
It was replaced by a royal hospital for retired and disabled seamen, built during the reign of William and Mary by Christopher Wren on the site of the old palace. Wren was given free reign with the design, except for one important point: whatever he built must not block the view of the river from the Queen’s House. The stunning results of that request can still be seen today. The Queen’s House had been started in 1616 by Inigo Jones for Anne of Denmark, wife of James I.
It was left unfinished when Anne died, and Charles I’s wife, Henrietta Maria, commissioned Jones to complete it. It was finished nearly twenty years after the initial work had started. It broke the mold of Tudor style and was seen as the birth of the English Renaissance. The house has one curious feature: it seems to be a bridge.
This was the rather muddy main road from Deptford to Woolwich. Jones wanted the house to have access to both the park and the river, so he built it straddling the thoroughfare. Henrietta was forced to leave the house on the arrest of her husband. She fled to the continent to raise funds for the King’s cause.
She returned after the Civil War ended, but by then the house was never going to be a prominent residence for the monarch. On the 18th of September, 1714, George I landed at Greenwich and held his first official reception there. For many years, Greenwich lost its connections with the crown, until in 1795, the future King’s bride-to-be arrived and soon changed all that. Caroline of Brunswick arrived en route to marry her cousin, the Prince of Wales, who was later crowned George IV.
The Prince had been forced into the marriage for political and financial reasons. He was heavily in debt, and Caroline came with a large dowry. She had the misfortune to be met by Lady Jersey, who she knew to be the Prince’s mistress. It was an inauspicious start.
They had a very unhappy first meeting. They had very different expectations of each other from the portraits they had seen. The Prince of Wales was shocked by her personal hygiene and her appearance, and he summoned someone to bring him a glass of brandy. She was also shocked by his appearance, and she found him rather fat.
The Prince was hopelessly drunk on his wedding day. The marriage was consummated that night — we know that because Princess Charlotte emerged nine months later. Shortly after Charlotte’s birth, they split. Caroline first lived in Charlton, just up the road, and then came to Montagu House.
She became involved with the running of an orphanage, where she took particular interest in one boy, William Austin. Rumors began to circulate that he was in fact her child. In 1806, an inquiry known as the Delicate Investigation was set up to look into the affairs of the princess. The court was out to get her but could find no real evidence to incriminate her.
Sadly, William Austin was taken to a mental home and spent the rest of his days there. During all her troubles, the people of Greenwich remained loyal to Princess Caroline, sending her letters of support and declarations of love. Caroline’s behavior became increasingly bizarre, and she was known to bathe in a specially constructed bath in the grounds of her house. The site of that bath is all that now remains of Montagu House.
It is said that the Prince Regent had the house torn down after Caroline returned to Germany. The elderly King George III was very fond of her, and in his lucid periods he gave her the job of Ranger of the Park. She didn’t have any real tasks, such as the historic duty to keep the deer, but the position came with a house. Caroline’s mother, Augusta, had moved next door into Ranger’s House to be near her daughter.
They were the first members of the royal family to actually live in Greenwich in a hundred years. The last royal resident to live there was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. He was the third son of Queen Victoria, and when he was born on the Duke of Wellington’s birthday, he seemed destined for a military life. By the tender age of twelve, he was given a separate establishment at Ranger’s House, where he studied under his tutor, Major General Elphinstone, primed for entry into the Royal Military Academy a couple of miles up the road in Woolwich.
The young prince’s life was extremely disciplined and solitary, consisting mainly of one-to-one tuition with very little to break the pattern of study. Two afternoons a week, some carefully selected local schoolboys were brought to the house, expected to amuse the prince and then lose graciously at the military games played within the specially constructed fort in the gardens. Ranger’s House at that time would have overlooked a very different park from the Tudor hunting ground. It had been re-landscaped by Andre Le Notre, gardener to Charles II, who wanted to create a more formal French layout.
This was never fully achieved, partly because of the steep hills and uneven ground. However, the park provided the ideal venue for the rather informal delights of the Greenwich Fair. Something like 250,000 people came from London to Greenwich on Easter weekend every year, enjoying the tremendous range of entertainment on offer. The greatest attraction was Richardson’s Theatre.
Richardson was one of the greatest showmen this country has ever known. He never learned to read or write, yet when he retired, he was a multi-millionaire. In his theatre booth, you could have a whole range of entertainment in half an hour: comic songs, a pantomime, and a most wonderful melodrama. The biggest and worst game, unique to Greenwich Fair, was running down the hill.
People joined hands and ran down the very steep hills of the park. That would be fine, except that generally they were very drunk. Necks were broken, skulls were fractured, legs and arms broken. Terrible devastation.
Very often people were forced to run, grabbed by a drunken party and made to join in. They were very often the victims. When Le Notre landscaped the park, the old growth was cleared away. However, one tree remained: the Queen Elizabeth Oak.
It is thought that even then the tree was known to have historical significance and was saved from the wood cutters. Many legends surround the tree, which was planted in the 12th century. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were thought to have danced around it during their courting days at Greenwich Palace. It got its name because Elizabeth I held open audiences with her courtiers beneath it.
In later years, the hollow trunk was used as a lock-up for those who broke park rules. Then, in June 1991, the great tree finally collapsed. A new oak was planted next to it by the Duke of Edinburgh to commemorate the 40th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
The tree is a symbolic connection between the past and the present, a silent witness to so many of the special events that link this part of the world with my family.
