Hampton Court Palace, set beside the River Thames to the southwest of London, is one of only two surviving palaces of the many owned by King Henry the Eighth and a magnificent showcase of both Tudor and later Baroque architecture. The palace was begun in the early sixteenth century by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the powerful chief minister, who created a residence so splendid that it aroused the envy of the king, to whom Wolsey eventually surrendered it as his own fortunes declined. Henry then enlar.....