the defence of the place.

The third court is much the largest of any, built at the expense of
the captive King of France; as it stands higher, so it greatly
excels the two former in splendour and elegance; it has one hundred
and forty-eight paces in length, and ninety-seven in breadth; in the
middle of it is a fountain of very clear water, brought under
ground, at an excessive expense, from the distance of four miles.
Towards the east are magnificent apartments destined for the royal
household; towards the west is a tennis-court for the amusement of
the Court; on the north side are the royal apartments, consisting of
magnificent chambers, halls, and bathing-rooms, {15} and a private
chapel, the roof of which is embellished with golden roses and
FLEURS-DE-LIS: in this, too, is that very large banqueting-room,
seventy-eight paces long, and thirty wide, in which the Knights of
the Garter annually celebrate the memory of their tutelar saint, St.
George, with a solemn and most pompous service.

From hence runs a walk of incredible beauty, three hundred and
eighty paces in length, set round on every side with supporters of
wood, which sustain a balcony, from whence the nobility and persons
of distinction can take the pleasure of seeing hunting and hawking
in a lawn of sufficient space; for the fields and meadows, clad with
variety of plants and flowers, swell gradually into hills of
perpetual verdure quite up to the castle, and at bottom stretch out
in an extended plain, that strikes the beholders with delight.

Besides what has been already mentioned, there are worthy of notice
here two bathing-rooms, ceiled and wainscoted with looking-glass;
the chamber in which Henry VI. was born; Queen Elizabeth's