King's Beasts, Hampton Court Palace

The King's Beasts are a series of 10 statues of heraldic animals that stand on the bridge over a moat leading to the great gatehouse of Hampton Court Palace.

The original statues were commissioned by King Henry VIII to represent his ancestry and that of his third wife Jane Seymour.

[3][4] After the house came into the ownership of the King, Wolsey's bridge had been condemned and the building of a new stone structure had begun in 1535.

[4] In October 1536 the main work was completed, by which time Henry had married a new queen, Jane Seymour.

Orders were given for the carving of the King's and Queen's beasts with shields to stand upon the bridge, with the carvers being Harry Corant and Richard Ridge from the neighbouring town of Kingston.

[a][6][2] It was decided to reconstruct the beasts based on the original directions, with the size being determined by the fragments that had been found.

Henry IV's son John, Duke of Bedford was the first to use the yale, but it is not clear if there was any particular reason for this choice.

[11] A Lion with a coronet (not the full royal crown) holds an escutcheon with Seymour's badge consisting of a phoenix and castle.

[13] George Cavendish, the biographer of Cardinal Wolsey, described carved and painted royal heraldic beasts in a garden at Richmond Palace.

Forty-two royal beasts sit atop St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

The King's Beasts, on the bridge before the Great Gatehouse
The bridge on which the King's Beasts had stood, as it looked at the time of its excavation in 1909. [ 1 ] Only the lower potions of the bridge survived William III 's late 17th century renovations, with none of the "Beasts" surviving intact. [ 2 ]
Henry VIII and his family , showing carved heraldic beasts in a garden, RCT
One of the wooden King's Beasts created in 2009 for the Chapel Court at Hampton Court Palace