Banqueting House, Whitehall room at Wilton House, to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family. 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
2nd Parliament of King Charles I King from his advisors. To some extent it was a polite fiction that the King was not himself behaving wrongly, but that he was badly advised. However, among many members of parliament there was a genuine dislike for the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham had originally been a favourite of the James I and had a great deal of contact with Charles while he was growing up. With the accession of Charles as king, Buckingham began to play an ever-growing role in the formulation and execution of policy. The Commons openly criticised him and would not provide the King with money