THE HISTORY OF THE KING'S WORKS: Volume IV, 1485-1660 (Part II) by Howard ColvinReview by: DEREK LINSTRUMJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 131, No. 5321 (APRIL 1983), pp. 290-291Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41373562 .

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS CORRESPONDENCE

CORRESPONDENCE

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY MONUMENT From Sam Scorer, AADip(Hons), FRIBA, 7 Lindum Terrace, Lincoln LN2 5RR. If any readers would be kind enough to write to me on this subject, I should be most grateful. I am looking at it world-wide under the headings of Military, Civil, Individual and Ideological: the last includes Technical (e.g., Space Travel) and Political (e.g., Na- tional Independence, Peace).

Although any information about any Monument which a member admires would be welcomed) a photograph, the name and address of the archi- tect/sculptor and the commissioning body would be much appreciated. It would be particularly interesting if the designers'

original drawings and models existed for display in a proposed exhibition in Lincoln Cathedral.

NOTES ON BOOKS

THE HISTORY OF THE KING'S WORKS Volume IV, 1485-1660 (Part II) General Editor, Howard Colvin London, HMSO (for the DoE), 1982. £55 The commissioning of 'a history of building as an enterprise of government from Saxon Times to the year 185 Г by the then Ministry of Public Building and Works was one of the legacies of the year that gave us the Royal Festival Hall and memories of the Festival of Britain. The sixth and final volume (in reality Volume IV) has been published thirty-one years later; but in its own way this enterprise may be regarded as a permanent memento of that confidence and sense of history that accompanied the early years of the new Elizabethan age that in 1951 was soon about to open. The first chapter of the first volume reminded us

that 'the King's works in England are as old as the monarchy itself and that 'the Old English Kings, no less than their successors, were notable patrons of architecture in their time'. That continuous patronage is displayed in around 3,500 pages which provide a panoramic view of the castles, fortifications, palaces and houses that were (and often are still) in the posses- sion of the Crown, as well as the public buildings (such as the British Museum and the Houses of Parlia- ment) which were the responsibility of the Royal Works until the establishment in 1851 of a ministry under full parliamentary control. It covers the reigns of monarchs from the Anglo-Saxons to Victoria, and the work for which thirty-seven known pre-Restoration clerks or surveyors and twelve Surveyors-General were responsible. As a source of reference and information about craftsmen, payments, sources of building materials, it is unique in this country and a monument to the scholarship and tenacity of its editor, Howard Colvin, and his twelve colleagues. Volume IV, the longest of all, is concerned principally

with the Royal houses (as distinct from the castles which were dealt with in volume III) and the fortifica- tions built or enlarged between 1485 and 1660. During 290

those years the only name that stands out clearly in the list of surveyors of the King's Works is that of Inigo Jones; but in the 130 years before a man with a secure place in architectural history was in charge there was plenty of activity. Henry VII ordered work at Wood- stock, Longley, Richmond and Greenwich, and his son acquired Hampton Court and Wolsey's house in Whitehall after the cardinal's downfall. A born collector (not only of wives), Henry VIII owned fifty houses by the time he died, and he was flattered as 'the onelie Phenix of his time for fine and curious masonrie'; but of them all Nonsuch is the one that still catches our imagination. Glittering, gilded, turreted and richly faced with allegorical scenes in high relief, this Royal fantasy is soberly discussed in terms of the cost of the timber provided for its construction, the agreements with the brickmakers and lime-burners, and the contri- butions of identifiable craftsmen to the ornate exterior. Among these last is Nicholas Bellin of Modena, who was working for Francis I at Fontainebleau before he left France for England in 1537; the acquisition of a master craftsman from his rival's team must have delighted Henry, and it probably accounts for the similarity between some of the known decoration at Nonsuch and that in the Gallery at Fontainebleau. Despite the rift between Rome and England, a few

Italian craftsmen continued to be employed in this country as accounts confirm; but on the whole there is little evidence of their influence in the Royal buildings. Nor would they have found much encouragement from Elizabeth I, whose architectural patronage was generally directed through the purses of her courtiers. The exception was Windsor Castle, where she spent money on building the Gallery which Sir JefFry Wyatville was to turn into the present Royal Library in the early nineteenth century. But during Elizabeth's reign the defences built by her father were kept in good repair and augmented to repel threats from Spain and Scotland. The extensive work at Berwick- on-Tweed, for example, is described ih greát detail,

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APRIL 1983

and once again there were important contributions by Italians, identified as Giovanni Portinari and Jacopo Aconcio (or Contio). Another Italian, Federico Genebelli, was employed at Plymouth; but when we come to Inigo Jones's appointment as surveyor, first to James I and later to his art-loving son, there is a difference. Instead of bringing Italian craftsmen or engineers to England, Jones brought Italian architecture itself. The Queen's House at Greenwich and the Banqueting House in Whitehall were arguably the most revolu- tionary Royal buildings ever to be erected in this country, and the long sections dealing with them are among the most important in this volume. A contem- porary wrote of the London building that it was 'too faire and nothing suitable to the rest of the house'; but the various attempts on paper by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Sir Christopher Wren to rectify this obvious criticism came to nothing. The great dream palace of the Stuarts was never built; if it had been volumes IV and V would have been much longer, and we might still be waiting for the successful conclusion of this definitive, objectively factual account of Royal archi- tectural patronage.

DEREK LINSTRUM

THE VICEROYS OF INDIA By Mark Bence- Jones London Constable, 1982. £12.50 Mark Bence-Jones considers that Mayo, the fourth Viceroy, was perhaps the greatest of them all, but their relative merits are inevitably hard to judge. They had different problems to contend with, and no one can say how Canning, Mayo or even Curzon would have coped with the challenges that faced the last Viceroys. India, before de Lesseps, was divided from Britain

by nearly 15,000 miles of ocean; and the early Viceroys were pleasantly unburdened by telegraphic or telephonic orders and instructions from London. As communica- tions improved, the Viceroys, from Northbrook on- wards, had increasingly to work within constraints imposed by the Government at home; and those con- straints aggravate the difficulties of comparisons be- tween them. Who can tell how each would have governed, if he had indeed been the autocrat which the trappings of Viceroyalty made him appear? The contrasting character and methods of twenty

Viceroys, in the fairly short period which divided the Indian Mutiny from Independence, lead one to ask whether, individually or collectively, they could have done more to achieve the transition without bloodshed and without the divorce of India from Pakistan. Thirty-six years after Independence, few doubt that

the transition was inevitable; but thirty-six years before it, when the seat of government moved to Delhi and the foundations of Lutyens' palace were laid in the new capital, the end of the Empire still seemed far away.

NOTES ON BOOKS

To Ripon it must have been clear, years earlier, that the growth of a powerful Indian middle-class would ultimately sap the power of Britain to govern. Ripon, however, was unfortunate in his immediate successors. Dufferin, the first of them and the idlest of all the Viceroys, was less interested in internal politics than foreign affairs. Lansdowne, who followed him, having accepted the Viceroyalty mainly in order to recoup the family finances, had 'no sense of mission, certainly no appreciation of the poetry of his high office*. Curzon, at the beginning of the twentieth century, failed to foresee the changes the first half of it would bring. The idea that it was Britain's duty to train the Indians to govern themselves was repugnant to him; and his in- sistence, in a speech, that 'the truth was a Western concept' can have made things no easier for his nine Viceregal successors. India needed brilliance in her Viceroys less than a clear vision of the future. After Curzon, the move towards India's responsibility

for her own government quickened. The unintellec- tual Minto brought the first Indian on to his Executive Council and, with the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the pace increased. Irwin, whom many considered a great Viceroy (although it is invidious for his son to endorse this judgement) first erred by excluding any Indian from membership of the Simon Commission, but later persuaded the newly-elected Labour Govern- ment to establish a Round Table conference and to agree to eventual Dominion Status. The final steps towards Independence seemed to

falter until the stresses of the 1939-45 war made its rapid implementation inevitable. Wavell's rôle was first, to keep India's war effort going, and then to prepare the way for Independence; Mountbatten's was 'to wind up the Raj'. Mr. Bence-Jones' multi-biography, not only of the

Viceroys and Vicereines, but also of the Governors- General who preceded them, throws much light on the problems of state as well as the sorrows and joys, domestic and personal, which were the lot of those who ruled in India during the 190 years after Clive's conquests. The turbulent land beyond the Khyber Pass occupied the attention of many of the Viceroys, and the present Russian efforts to control Afghanistan would cause no astonishment to the shades of Lytton and Dufferin. The health, particularly of the early Viceroys and

their families, was a constant preoccupation. Mayo alone was assassinated, but his three predecessors all died young. Before Lawrence, the Government was conducted all the year round from the steamy heat of Calcutta; but few of his successors had much love for Simla, and its narrow social life. Fewer still shared Dufferin's pride in his 'enchanted castle', built to replace the cramped, but more homely, Peterhof. The rôle of the Vicereines was significant; to the

majority of them, India - and the Viceroys - had cause to be grateful; as they did also to many remark-

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