Buckingham Palace [antikvár]

i I '• I •! jr»!. I 'i-STs, uL-V INTRODUCTION rAs) BUCKINGHAM PALACE, which- is today the principal state or official residence of the British Monarchy, has served that function only since comparatively recent times. In the Middle Ages the principal London residence of the Norman and Plantagenet kings and their successors was the Palace of Westminster, now rebuilt as the Houses of Parliament. Whitehall was the main royal palace from the reign of Henry VIII to that of William III when it was largely destroyed by fire. In the eighteenth century St James's Palace, built by Henry VIII on the site of a medieval leper hospital to serve as a hunting lodge, was used by the Hanoverian kings. The creation of Buckingham Palace as an appropriate symbol of national greatness in the aftermath of the victories of the Napoleonic Wars was due to George IV. Although converted to a palace by George IV and first lived in by Queen Victoria soon after her accession in r837, the property was acquired originally for the Crown by George III in 1762. The history of the site, however, can be traced back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and in 1633 Lord Goring built on it 'a fair house and other convenient buildings and outhouses'. In 1677 the Earl of ArUngton rebuilt the house on a larger scale in the fashionable Caroline manner. The house was