<P> The term Banqueting House was something of a misnomer . The hall within the house was, in fact, used not only for banqueting, but also royal receptions, ceremonies, and the performance of masques . The entertainments given there would have been among the finest in Europe, for, during this period, England was considered the area's leading musical country . On 5 January 1617, Pocahontas and Tomocomo were brought before the King at the Banqueting House, at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque The Vision of Delight . According to John Smith, James I was so unprepossessing, neither of the natives realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterward . Such masques were later augmented with French musicians, whom Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, brought to the court . The masques began a slow decline, however, after the death in 1625 of Orlando Gibbons, who ironically died on a trip to meet the newly married Henrietta Maria and her musicians . </P> <P> Inside the building is a single two - storey, double - cube room . The double - cube, in which the length of the room is twice its equal width and height, is another Palladianism, where all proportions are mathematically related . At the upper level, the room is surrounded by what is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a minstrels' gallery . While musicians may have played from this vantage point, its true purpose was to admit an audience; at the time of the Banqueting House's construction, Kings still lived in "splendour and state", or publicly . The less exalted and the general public would be permitted to crowd the gallery in order to watch the King dine . The lower status of those in the gallery was emphasised by the lack of an internal staircase, the gallery only being accessible by an external staircase . The building was, however, later extended to accommodate an internal staircase . </P> <P> James I, for whom the Banqueting House was created, died in 1625 and was succeeded by his son, Charles I . The accession of Charles I heralded a new era in the cultural history of England . The new King was a great patron of the arts--he added to the Royal Collection and encouraged the great painters of Europe to come to England . In 1623 he visited Spain where he was impressed by Titian, Rubens, and Velázquez . It became his ambition to find a comparable painter for his own court . Rubens while in England as a diplomat was asked to design and paint the Banqueting House ceiling which was sketched in London but completed at his studio in Antwerp due to the scale of the job . The subject, commissioned by the King, was the glorification of his father, titled The Apotheosis of James I, and was an allegory of his own birth . To the King's chagrin Rubens took his knighthood and decamped back to Antwerp, leaving Anthony van Dyck, lured not only with a knighthood but also a pension and a house, to remain in England as the court painter . The panels for the ceiling were all painted in Rubens' atelier in Antwerp and sent to London by ship . Inigo Jones later designed another double - cube room at Wilton House, to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family . </P> <P> Given the attention and effort which were lavished by Charles I on the Banqueting House, his end was not without irony . On the afternoon of 30 January 1649 he stepped out of a first floor window of Banqueting House onto the scaffold which had been erected outside for the purpose of his execution . The actual window no longer exists as it was not in the main hall but just outside it in an adjacent part of the building which has now gone and, pictured from the outside, would have been the next window along at the north end, roughly above the current visitors' entrance . </P>

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