The later bed, by contrast, is English and was ordered by the Great Wardrobe for the apartments of James II (now king) at Whitehall Palace in August 1688 – only three months before he fled to France and exile. The silk hangings and seat covers of the bed and its matching seat furniture, woven with gold and silver bullion, constitute an immensely rich evocation of a Louis Quatorze bedchamber translated to England. It is one of the most remarkable French seventeenth-century state beds to survive. The earlier bed was made in Paris and was either a gift from King Louis XIV to his first cousin James, Duke of York (later James II) and his consort Mary of Modena for their wedding in 1673, or was ordered by James himself.
Thanks to the avid collector and courtier Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset (1643-1706), Knole contains the most significant assemblage of textile-covered seventeenth-century royal furniture in existence: two state beds that belonged to James II, a table and stands commissioned by Louis XIV and numerous chairs that came from Whitehall Palace and Hampton Court as perquisites of Dorset’s post as Lord Chamberlain, which allowed him to remove out of date furniture.
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