St Stephen's Chapel

By 1548, the Royal Court, whenever it was in Westminster, had moved up the street in Whitehall, which left the surviving buildings of the Palace of Westminster itself, which had been much reduced by the fire of 1512, to the government and civil administration of the monarchs.

Now, the House of Commons had usually met in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, but between 1548 and 1550, it now moved into St Stephen's Chapel, the grand sacred space and former chapel of the Royal Palace of Westminster.

Now, St Stephen's Chapel had been originally King Henry III's grand attempt to replicate Paris' Sainte-Chapelle, a story, coincidentally, we covered all the way back in chapter 92 of the podcast.

That was the one where the king's religious ecstasy and desire to make Westminster a centre of pilgrimage began and then failed.

The completion of the rather beautiful St Stephen's Chapel took a while and it wasn't actually completed until 1297 or in our reckoning sometime round about chapter 107.

But now with all the changes to the status of religious locations it was secularized for use by the Parliament.

It became the new home of the Commons, their new house.