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HatrFieEtp House. 
There are few of the stately homes of England better known 
to fame, or which have more historical interest attached to them, 
than Hatfield, in the county of Hertford. The domain appears 
to have first come into note in the time of King Edgar, when the 
Manor of Hatfield, which had been part of the demesne of the 
Saxon princes, was presented to the Abbey of Ely. The Abbey 
was made a Bishopric by Henry I., and Hatfield became a bishop’s 
residence. The old palace was built by Morton, Bishop of Ely, 
between 1479 and 1486, but the only portions remaining of the 
ancient structure are the gateway and the banqueting hall, the latter, 
with its lofty ribbed Spanish-chestnut roof and quaint corbels, 
being now used as stables. Henry VIII. took a fancy to Hatfield, 
and when Thomas Goodrich wished to become Bishop of Ely, the 
king granted his request only on the condition that Hatfield should 
revert to the Crown in exchange for some other lands near Ely. 
In 1538, accordingly, Hatfield became Royal property, and there 
Henry occasionally resided. Edward VI. is said to have been at 
Hatfield when he received the news of his accession to the throne; 
and at this Royal residence the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards 
Queen Elizabeth, lived in retirement during the latter years of the 
reign of her half-sister Queen Mary. She was sitting under an 
old oak tree, which unfortunately is now quite dead, when she 
received the news of the death of Mary and of her accession to the 
throne. 
The transference of Hatfield to the Cecils was effected by another 
whim of the reigning sovereign. When James VI. of Scotland and 
First of England was travelling from Edinburgh to London to assume 
the English Crown, he rested at Sir Robert Cecil’s house of Theo- 
balds, also in Herts, about 8 miles south-east of Hatfield, and took 
such a fancy to it that in 1607 a deed was signed exchanging Hatfield 
for Theobalds. Since that date Hatfield has been held by the 
direct line of the famous Cecil family. It was Sir Robert Cecil, 
the second son of the great Lord Burleigh, and afterwards first Earl 
of Salisbury, who built the present mansion-house. Begun in 
1605, it was finished in 1611, and it seems from the bills still extant 
that the whole cost of the magnificent structure was only £7000. 
The Earl, however, is said to have been his own architect and 
builder, and to have carried out his plans with his own workmen. 
The mansion-house stood as it had been built until 1835, when 
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