The origins of Kings Langley Palace are not known, but it is thought that the estate land was originally the property of the Manor of
Chilterne Langley or
Langley Chenduit. The estate would have part of a large, dense forest stretching from London out to
Berkhamsted which was abundant in
deer, and a hunting lodge is known to have existed on the estate during the reign of
Henry III. The manor became a royal possession in 1276 when Queen
Eleanor of Castile, wife of King
Edward I ("Edward Longshanks"), acquired the estate and supervised the development of a lavish royal household. There are records of a "new start" in 1277, and these are thought to be either improvements to an existing property or a new house being built at the top of the hill. Little is known about the early development of the palace, but records exist from 1279 to 1281 which indicate that the palace had private chambers for Edward and Eleanor and for their son,
Alphonso, Earl of Chester. Kings Langley Palace served as a family home for Edward and Eleanor. Their son, Edward of Caernarfon (later King
Edward II), who was born in
Caernarfon Castle in 1284, spent much of his youth at Langley Palace. Prince Alfonso, heir to the throne, died only months after the young Edward's birth, and Queen Eleanor died unexpectedly in 1290. With Prince Edward now heir to the throne, Langley Palace was destined to be inherited by the young prince. After Eleanor's death, the king took residence at
Ashridge and held
Parliament there in 1290 and 1291. In 1299 the aging King Edward I remarried to
Margaret of France, granting her
Berkhamsted and
Hertford castles, and he returned to Langley. That same year, he summoned the
Bishop of Norwich,
John Salmon;
John of Berkhamsted, Abbot of St Albans; and
Aymon, Count of Savoy, to celebrate the
feast day of All Saints with him and Queen Margaret at Kings Langley. After Prince Edward was invested as
Prince of Wales, King Edward I granted Langley to him in 1302. The young prince was enthusiastic about music, the arts, horse racing and kept a small
menagerie, which included a
lion and a
camel, at Langley. He also allowed his favourite,
Piers Gaveston, to live with him at the palace, a companionship which scandalised England at the time. In 1307 Edward II was crowned king and founded the neighbouring
King's Langley Priory in 1308 in the park of his manor adjacent to the palace. It was here that King Edward reburied his beloved Gaveston in January 1315 following his execution. Langley Palace remained the king's favourite residence until his death in 1327. Today, no traces of the monastery church or Gaveston's tomb remain. During the reign of
Edward III, his fifth son,
Edmund of Langley, was born in Langley Palace in 1341 and drew his name from the manor. After his death in 1402, Edmund was buried in the priory there. In the late 1340s,
England was being ravaged by the spread of
Black Death; with high death rates in
London, Edward III moved his
court out of the city to Langley Palace in July 1349, and for a short period the seat of government was based in Kings Langley. The author of
The Canterbury Tales,
Geoffrey Chaucer, would have visited the palace during his appointment as Clerk of the Kings Works to King
Richard II between 1389 and 1391. Later King Richard II celebrated
Christmas there. However, records of subsequent repair work to the buildings indicate that the palace was not entirely destroyed by the fire. The last evidence of the palace being used for official occasions was in 1476 when
William Wallingford,
Abbot of
St Albans Abbey, held a
banquet there for the
Bishop of
Llandaff. During the reign of
Charles I, Kings Langley royal park was cleared to make way for agriculture and
tenant farmers cultivated the land. By 1652 there were ten farmers on the estate. In 1626, Charles I granted the Langley Estate to Sir
Charles Morrison, owner of the
estate of Cassiobury at nearby
Watford who already held a lease on part of the land at Langley. Upon his death in 1628, the estate passed to his daughter, Elizabeth Morrison, and her husband
Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham. Capell, a
Royalist in the
English Civil War, was executed in 1649, and the estate was granted to a
Parliamentarian,
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. Following the
Restoration, the Langley Estate was returned by the crown to the Capell family, granting it to Capell's son
Arthur Capell and also creating him
Earl of Essex. In the late 17th century the expansion of the London population meant that landowners in the surrounding country were increasingly turning their land to agricultural use to meet the demand for food and animal feed. Many parks eventually disappeared; Kings Langley Park did not feature on a 1675 map drawn by
John Seller. Remnants of the palace complex remained for many years after it ceased to be a royal residence, falling gradually into decay. The
gatehouse and parts of the main building were still standing in 1591, and in his 1728
History of Hertfordshire,
Nathanael Salmon states that "Here the rubbish of royalty exists" in reference to Kings Langley. A description published by
John Murray in 1895 reports that "at Kings Langley some outer walls only exist of the once royal palace, erected by Henry III." Today, nothing remains of the royal palace; the site was occupied by the
Rudolf Steiner School, which closed in March 2019. Some ruins exist in the vicinity; ruined flint walls and fragments of stonework remain in the garden of house number 80, Langley Hill, which are thought to be part of a house built for Sir Charles Morrison around 1580 when he held a lease on the crown land. ==Architecture==