Hatfield House, that great historical museum and ancient repository of State secrets, is little seen from the village, nor have we, as wayfarers along the road, much to do with it. It is by the parish church, its characteristic Hertfordshire extinguisher spire so prominent above the tumbled roofs of Hatfield, that we may glimpse the older parts of the house. In that church lies its builder, the great Robert Cecil, his effigy, with the Lord Treasurer’s wand of office, recumbent on a slab uplifted by statues emblematic of Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, and Temperance, and a skeleton below, to show that even Lord Treasurers, possessed though they be of all the virtues, are mortal, like less exalted and less virtuous men.

The house that he built seems sadly out of repair. The history of it is romantic to a degree. Originally the palace of the Bishops of Ely, whose delicate constitutions could not stand the fen-land vapours which enwrapped the neighbourhood of their glorious Cathedral (but perhaps were not harmful to the less dignified clergy!), it remained in their possession until it was coveted by Henry the Eighth, who gave some land at Ely in exchange. So the bishops had, doubtless with an ill grace, to go back to that fertile breeding-ground of agues and rheumatism, and one can well imagine the resident inferior clergy, between their aches and pains, chuckling secretly about this piece of poetic justice.

And so in Royal possession the old palace continued until James the First in his turn exchanged it for the estate of Sir Robert Cecil at Theobalds. Previously it had been the home—the prison, rather of the Princess Elizabeth during her sister Mary’s reign. The oak is still shown in the park under which she was sitting when the news of Mary’s death and the end, consequently, of the surveillance to which she was subjected, was brought her, November 17, 1588. (But is tradition truthful here? Would she have been sitting under an oak in November?) “It is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes,” she exclaimed, quoting from the Psalms. Three days later she held her first council in the old palace, and then on the 23rd set out for London.

There are relics of the great queen at Hatfield House: a pair of her stockings and the garden hat she was wearing when the great news came to her. But the house is nearly all of a later date, for when Sir Robert Cecil obtained it in exchange for Theobalds, he pulled down the greater part of the old palace and built the present striking Jacobean building, magnificent and impressive, and perhaps not the less impressive for being also somewhat gloomy. This is no place to recount the glories of its picture-galleries and its noble state-rooms, or of the long line of the exalted and the great who have been entertained here. Moreover, the great are not uncommonly the dullest of dull dogs. It is rather with those of less estate, and with travellers, that in these pages we shall find our account. Pepys, for instance, whom we need not object to call the natural man (for does not Scripture tell us that the human heart in a natural state is “desperately wicked”? and Samuel was no Puritan), who was here lusting to steal somebody’s dog, as he acknowledged in that very outspoken Diary of his:—“Would fain have stolen a pretty dog that followed me, but could not, which troubled me.”

There was a tragical happening at Hatfield, November 27, 1835, when the house was greatly injured by fire, and the old and eccentric Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury burnt to death, in her eighty-fifth year. The pious declared it to be a “judgment” for her playing cards on Sunday; but what a number of conflagrations we should have if that were true and Providence consistent in its vengeance!

XV

Leaving Hatfield and its memories behind, we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Stanborough, to the long gradual rise of Digswell Hill, beautifully engineered over the uplands rising from the marshy banks of the little river Lea. Off to the left, at the foot of the hill, goes the old road at a wide tangent, and with a decidedly abrupt plunge down into the water-meadows, crossing the Lea by Lemsford Mills, and rejoining the newer road on an equally abrupt and difficult rise half-way up the hill, by the wall of Brockett Hall Park. It was here that Brickwall turnpike gate was situated in the old days. The brick wall of the park that gave the gate its name is still there and a very old, substantial, and beautifully lichened red-brick wall it is—but the gate and the toll-board and the toll-house have all vanished. Digswell Hill is beautiful, and so is Ayot Green, at the summit, with its giant trees and humble cottages stretching away on the left to the Ayot villages. Not so the “Red Lion” close by. More beautiful still—and steeper—is the descent into Welwyn, beneath over-arching trees and rugged banks, down from which secluded rustic summer-houses look upon the traffic of the highway.

Welwyn lies in a deep hollow on the little river—or, more correctly speaking, the streamlet—of the Mimram. Street and houses face you alarmingly as you descend the steep hillside, wondering (if you cycle) if the sharp corner can safely be rounded, or if you must needs dash through door or window of the “White Hart,” once one of the two coaching inns of the village.

The “White Hart” at Welwyn was kept in the “twenties” by “old Barker,” who horsed the Stamford “Regent” a stage on the road, and was, in the language of the coachmen, a “three-cornered old beggar.” That is to say, he kept a tight hand over the doings of coachmen and guards, did not approve of “shouldering,” and objected to the coachmen giving lessons to gentlemen coachmen, or allowing amateurs to “take the ribbons.” From the passengers’ point of view this was entirely admirable of “old Barker,” for many an inoffensive traveller’s life had been jeopardised by the driving of unqualified persons. Colonel Birch Reynardson tells a story of him and of Tom Hennesy, the best known of the “Regent” coachmen—one who could whistle louder, hit a horse harder, and tell a bigger lie than any of his contemporaries. Hennesy had resigned the reins to him one day between London and Hatfield, but when they neared Welwyn, the accomplished Tom thought he had better resume them. “It would never do for old Barker to see you driving,” said he. The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the “three-cornered old beggar” himself appeared, walking up the hill, with the double object of taking a constitutional and of seeing if any “shouldering” was going on.

“Don’t look as if you seed him,” said Tom. “We’ll make the best of it we can.”