Banqueting House, Whitehall Banqueting House, Whitehall The Banqueting House, Whitehall, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the first structure to be completed in the neo-classical style, which was to transform English architecture. Begun in 1619 and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Andrea Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was beheaded on a scaffold in front
3rd Parliament of King Charles I then turned its attention to Tonnage and Poundage, two onerous taxes on which the King was dependent and which Parliament considered illegal. The King brought the session to a rapid close. Over the summer the fleet to relieve La Rochelle was assembled, but the commander Buckingham was murdered by a disgruntled army officer. The fleet nevertheless sailed under a new commander but achieved little success. When Parliament reconvened in January 1629 it returned to the issue of Tonnage and Poundage, claiming that its continued imposition contradicted the Petition of Right. Matters got so heated that Charles dissolved Parliament by proclamation