buildings were intersected by grassy squares, where fountains
played, statues were grouped, and dials shadowed the passing
hour. At hand stood St. James's Park, with its fair meadows and
leafy trees; close by flowed the placid Thames, bearing heavily
laden lighters and innumerable barges. Attached to these
dwellings, and forming part of the palace, stood the great
banquet hall, erected from designs by Inigo Jones for James I.
Here audiences to ambassadors, state balls, and great banquets
were held. The ceiling was painted by Rubens, and was, moreover,
handsomely moulded and richly gilt. Above the entrance-door
stood a statue of Charles I.,"whose majestic mien delighted the
spectator;" Whilst close by one of the windows were the
ineradicable stains of blood, marking the spot near which he had
been beheaded.

Now in the train of the queen mother there had travelled from
France "a most pretty sparke of about fourteen years," whom Mr.
Pepys plainly terms "the king's bastard," but who was known to
the court as young Mr. Crofts. This little gentleman was son of
Lucy Walters, "a brown, beautiful, bold creature," who had the
distinction of being first mistress to the merry monarch. That
he was his offspring the king entertained no doubt, though others
did; inasmuch as young Mr. Crofts grew to resemble, "even to the
wart on his face," Colonel Robert Sidney, whose paramour Lucy
Walters had been a brief while before his majesty began an
intrigue with her. Soon after the boy's birth that beautiful
woman abandoned herself to pleasures, in which the king had no
participation. He therefore parted from her; had her son placed
under the guardianship of Lord Crofts, whose name he bore, and
educated by the Peres de l'Oratoire at Paris. The while he was