CHAPTER XIII

ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND

I. _Elizabethan Art_

Derivation of the Elizabethan domestic architecture from the native mediæval art--The reasonable character of the early Elizabethan house in its integrity--The ostentatious character and pseudo-classicism of the great English houses of the sixteenth century--Use of flimsy materials in ornamental details--General excellence of construction in the main body of the building--Employment of foreign craftsmen in ornamentation--Kirby Hall--Its lack of native English character--Peculiar aberrations in the use of structural forms without structural functions--Fantastic ornamentation of the gables--Longford Castle--Its resemblance to Chambord--Manifold forms of capricious design in Lower Walterstone Hall, Cranborne Manor-House, Tixall, Stanway, and other buildings--Fantastic composition of the gate at Caius College, Cambridge--Aberrations of design in Wollaton Hall--Ungrammatical and tasteless misuse of distorted classic elements in Elizabethan architecture largely due to Flemish and Dutch workmen--No professional architects in Elizabethan times--The classic orders foreign to the genius and the needs of the English people 216