Hampton Court Palace plan with grand apartments on a raised piano nobile, all rendered with classical detailing. The historian Jonathan Foyle has suggested that it is likely that Wolsey had been inspired by Paolo Cortese's "De Cardinalatu", a manual for cardinals that included advice on palatial architecture, published in 1510. The architectural historian Sir John Summerson asserts that the palace shows "the essence of Wolsey—the plain English churchman who nevertheless made his sovereign the arbiter of Europe and who built and furnished Hampton Court to show foreign embassies that Henry VIII's chief minister knew how to live as graciously as any cardinal in
Hampton Court and Dittons Regatta Hampton Court and Dittons Regatta Hampton Court and Dittons Regatta is a regatta on the River Thames in England which takes place at Thames Ditton, Surrey beside Hampton Court Palace. The regatta was inaugurated in 1887, being described as an "Aquatic Sports and Venetian Fete", although Alfred Sisley's painting illustrates a regatta in existence some thirteen years earlier at the same location. Pleasure boating on the River Thames between Teddington Lock and Molesey Lock had become extremely popular, and owners of self-propelled craft were interested in more sporting activity than just recreational boating, and competitors came from local sports clubs.