In Memoriam. King Charles I. Beheaded 30 January, 1649
The Place
On a bitterly cold January day in 1649, King Charles I stepped out onto a special dais erected for his execution outside Banqueting House at Whitehall.
Earlier that morning he had dressed at St. James's Palace, putting on two shirts, under his doublet, fearing that if he shivered in the cold witnesses to his beheading would think that he did so out of fear. Then wearing a cloak and the Star of the Order of the Garter, (on the scaffold he was to hand this insignia to his spiritual adviser Luxon, Bishop of London, saying "Remember"), he walked briskly across St. James's Park to Whitehall Palace with his captors. It was from the first floor of Banqueting House that he stepped out to his death upon a hastily erected raised scaffold.
Little remains today of the Stuart kings' inspired vision of Whitehall Palace. It was designed in Palladian splendour by Inigo Jones, King's Surveyor to James I and his son Charles I, and added to in Baroque splendour by Sir Christopher Wren, who became King's Surveyor after Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the 1666 Great Fire which destroyed most of London.
Banqueting House is one of the few surviving buildings and was rebuilt in the Italianate style after Palladio by Inigo Jones in 1619, after a fire had destroyed the original wood and brick building. Inigo Jones is justly regarded as the founding father of Palladianism in England, a term that was coined at a later date for the Renaissance interpretation of the architecture of Ancient Rome. Banqueting House is a glorious example of this and remains the architect's most celebrated legacy to London.
The elaborate and ornate royal theatre interior which Jones converted for King Charles from the original Cock Pit is sadly lost to us, as are his extensions to Somerset House on the Thames embankment. As adviser to the Earl of Bedford, who was granted Royal permission create London's first square as a commercial piece of real estate, he designed an Italianate piazza, its surrounding houses, arcade and church, (completed 1633),in Covent Garden.
All but the Church of St. Paul, with its famous portico of Tuscan columns, have been demolished over the succeeding centuries. The portico was enshrined in Thomas Rowlandson's illustration for Ackermann's book of 1808, Microcosms of London and again in the 20th century film My Fair Lady. It was background to Eliza Doolittle's first meeting with Professor Higgins.
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