St James's Palace in the context of "Charles I's execution"

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⭐ Core Definition: St James's Palace

St James's Palace is the most senior royal palace in London, England. The palace gives its name to the Court of St James's, which is the monarch's royal court, and is located in the City of Westminster. Although no longer the principal residence of the monarch, it is the ceremonial meeting place of the Accession Council, the office of the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, and the London residence of several members of the royal family.

Built by order of King Henry VIII in the 1530s on the site of an isolated leper hospital dedicated to Saint James the Less, the palace was secondary in importance to the Palace of Whitehall for most Tudor and Stuart monarchs. Initially surrounded by a deer park and gardens, it was generally used as a hunting lodge and as a retreat from the formal court and occasionally as a royal guest house. After the Palace of Whitehall burned down, the palace took on administrative functions for the monarchy. It increased in importance during the reigns of the Hanoverian monarchs but began to be displaced by Buckingham Palace in the early 19th century. After decades of being used increasingly only for formal occasions, the move was formalised by Queen Victoria in 1837.

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In this Dossier

St James's Palace in the context of Death and funeral of Mary I of England

Mary I of England died on 17 November 1558 at St James's Palace in Westminster. She was 42 years old. Mary was buried in Westminster Abbey on 14 December.

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St James's Palace in the context of Execution of Charles I

Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, was publicly executed on 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, London. The execution was the culmination of political and military conflicts between the royalists and the parliamentarians in England during the English Civil War, leading to Charles's capture and his trial. On 27 January 1649 the parliamentarian High Court of Justice had declared Charles guilty of attempting to "uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people" and sentenced him to death by beheading.

Charles spent his last few days in St James's Palace, accompanied by his most loyal subjects and visited by his family. On 30 January he was taken to a large black scaffold constructed in front of the Banqueting House, where a large crowd had gathered. Charles stepped onto the scaffold and gave his last speech, declaring his innocence of the crimes of which parliament had accused him, and claiming himself a "martyr of the people". The crowd could not hear the speech, owing to the many parliamentarian guards blocking the scaffold, but Charles's companion, Bishop William Juxon, recorded it in shorthand. Charles gave a few last words to Juxon, claiming an "incorruptible crown" for himself in Heaven, and put his head on the block. He waited a few moments, and after giving a signal that he was ready, the anonymous executioner beheaded Charles with a single blow and held Charles's head up to the crowd silently, dropping it into the swarm of soldiers soon after.

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St James's Palace in the context of Proclamation of accession of Charles III

Charles III became King of the United Kingdom and of 14 other Commonwealth realms upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, on 8 September 2022. Royal succession in the realms occurs immediately upon the death of the reigning monarch. The formal proclamation in Britain occurred on 10 September 2022, at 10:00 BST, the same day on which the Accession Council gathered at St James's Palace in London. The other realms, including most Canadian provinces and all Australian states, issued their own proclamations at times relative to their time zones, following meetings of the relevant privy or executive councils. While the line of succession is identical in all the Commonwealth realms, the royal title as proclaimed is not the same in all of them.

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St James's Palace in the context of Court of St James's

The Court of St James's serves as the official royal court for the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. The court formally receives all ambassadors accredited to the United Kingdom. Likewise, ambassadors representing the United Kingdom are formally accredited from this court.

The marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, known as Master of the Ceremonies before 1920, serves as the liaison between the British monarch and foreign diplomatic missions. The marshal is stationed permanently at St James's Palace. As of 1886, there were merely six ambassadors in London, while 37 other countries were represented by ministers. (The custom, developed in the 18th century, was that only monarchies sent ambassadors, while others sent ministers; this distinction was abrogated toward the end of the 19th century.) By 2015, the number of foreign missions accredited to the Court of St James's had risen to 175, including 47 high commissions from Commonwealth countries and 128 embassies from non-Commonwealth countries.

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St James's Palace in the context of St James's Park

St James's Park is a 23-hectare (57-acre) urban park in the City of Westminster, central London. A Royal Park, it is at the southernmost end of the St James's area, which was named after a once isolated medieval hospital dedicated to St James the Less, now the site of St James's Palace. The area was initially enclosed for a deer park near the Palace of Whitehall for King Henry VIII in the 1530s. It is the most easterly of a near-continuous chain of public parks that includes (moving westward) Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens.

The park is bounded by Buckingham Palace to the west, The Mall to the north, Horse Guards to the east, and Birdcage Walk to the south. It meets Green Park at Queen's Gardens with the Victoria Memorial at its centre, opposite the entrance to Buckingham Palace. St James's Palace is on the opposite side of The Mall. The closest London Underground stations are St James's Park, Green Park, Victoria, and Westminster.

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St James's Palace in the context of Lancaster House

Lancaster House (originally known as York House and then Stafford House) is a mansion on The Mall in the St James's district in the City of Westminster. Adjacent to Green Park, it is next to Clarence House and St James's Palace, as much of the site was once part of the palace grounds.

Initially planned for Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, it was ultimately completed by the Duke of Sutherland, then Marquess of Stafford, as an aristocratic townhouse in the early 19th century, and known for its lavish interiors. Gifted to the government in the early 20th century, it houses the government's wine cellars and was home to the London Museum until the Second World War. Now used for diplomatic receptions and related functions by the Foreign Office, it is a historic Grade I listed building, and its interiors are sometimes used in films or television as a stand-in for Buckingham Palace.

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St James's Palace in the context of Scriblerus Club

The Scriblerus Club was an informal association of authors, based in London, that came together in the early 18th century. They were prominent figures in the Augustan Age of English letters. The nucleus of the club included the satirists Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Other members were John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. The group was founded in 1714 and lasted until the death of the founders, finally ending in 1745. Pope and Swift are the two members whose reputations and work have the most long-lasting influence. Working collaboratively, the group created the persona of Martinus Scriblerus, through whose writings they accomplished their satirical aims. Very little of this material, however, was published until the 1740s. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to their literary output. He, along with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, contributed to the literary productions of the club.

The club began as an effort to satirize the abuses of learning wherever they might be found, which led to The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. The second edition of Pope's The Dunciad also contains work attributed to Martinus Scriblerus.

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St James's Palace in the context of Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales

The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, started on Saturday 6 September 1997 at 9:08 am in London, when the tenor bell of Westminster Abbey started tolling to signal the departure of the cortège from Kensington Palace. Diana's coffin was carried from the palace on a gun carriage by riders of the King's Troop and escorted by mounted police along Hyde Park to St James's Palace, where her body had remained for five days before being taken to Kensington Palace. The Union Flag on top of the palace was lowered to half mast. The official ceremony was held at Westminster Abbey in London and finished at the resting place in Diana's family estate of Althorp, Northamptonshire.

Two thousand people attended the ceremony in Westminster Abbey while the British television audience was 32.10 million on average, one of the United Kingdom's highest viewing figures ever. An estimated 2 to 2.5 billion people watched the event worldwide, making it one of the most-watched televised events in history.

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