Where Charles Lost His Head

John and I have been making the most of a membership in the Historic Royal Palaces. It gives us unlimited access to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace. It also gives us royal intrigue, infidelity, marriages, death and executions until we're blue in the face.

We visited the Banqueting House and Kensington Palace one weekend recently. Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House is the only remnant of the Palace of Whitehall that was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698. Before most of it was destroyed by fire it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe, with over 1,500 rooms.

As you can see from the photo on the right the most amazing thing in the Banqueting House are the ceiling paintings done by Peter Paul Rubens in the 1600s. Charles I hired the Flemish master to immortalize his father, James I, as a god. And, indeed, one sees King James floating around the stratosphere with classical gods, cherubs and the like on several of the major panels. And why not? I asked myself. James and Charles both believed they had a divine right from God to rule over Great Britain.

The problem was Charles I really put the Divine Right of Kings to the test when he tried to rule without the consent of Parliament, came out on the losing side in the English Civil War, was tried and found guilty of high treason and was sentenced to death. In January 1649 he was beheaded (ironically and ignominiously) on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting Hall he loved so much.

Our visit to Kensington Palace on the western edge of Hyde Park was a different experience. Much of that royal palace is off limits to the general public because it houses the offices and private apartments of a number of members of the Royal Family. We did tour the Royal Apartments used by Stuart and Hanoverian monarchs. One room I found particularly interesting was Queen Victoria's childhood bedroom; it was here that she learned early one morning that she was queen.

In the former apartments of the late Princess Margaret there's a borderline camp exhibit on the last debutante season of 1958. Ball gowns, cut-aways, dance and etiquette lessons and just how to curtsy. The amount of detail about this right of passage for young aristocratic women was staggering.

Naturally it's difficult to go to Kensington Palace and not think of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lived there from the time she married Prince Charles until her death in 1997. There's an exhibit of about a dozen of her designer dresses as well as reminders of the public outpouring of grief at her accidental death. John recalled flying to London on the day of her funeral for business, driving by the Palace and seeing the million bouquets of flowers left at the gates.