HATFIELD HOUSE, 



HERTFORDSHIRE. 



TRt'I.V, Hat field IN a nohlc house, with all the 

 honours of age. But a great name at either 

 : of its history has advanced its fame out 

 of all proportion, until, for the sake of two 

 of its lords, it has come to be reckoned by some the 

 nonpareil of all Knglish country scats. As tor the 

 lands and lordship <>' 1 1. K field, they have been a 

 rich estate to be coveted these thousand years. A 

 Saxon king gave them to an Ivly monastery, and, 

 when Domesday Book was made, the Abbot of My 

 was written down here as lord of this great manor, its 

 broad fields furrowed by many ploughs and its forest 

 trees that dropped acorns and beech-mast for the two 

 thousand hogs driven by ( Jurth and his fellows under 

 the green bough. In the next generation it was a 

 bishop who lorded Hatficld from Kly, and thereafter 

 this Hatfield has been Bishops Hattield, if you would 



name it apart from other I {at fields un and down 

 i land. It has never been sold nor forfeited suue 

 its history began, having changed its lords but tu 

 and then by fair barter. Of" the Bishops of' I-.ly there 

 is a memorial here in the gables and twisted chimneys, 

 the long root and the turret seen m our putures 

 lt-\ond the phlox in bloom. John Morton is named 

 as the builder of this old pal.ue of llattield, Parker, 

 and others following him, giving 1478 as the date <>t 

 it. But Morton was not a bishop until the year 

 following, and, if he built Hatfield, his work must lie 

 between 1479, when he was elected to the See, and 

 148}, when King Richard sent him to the Tower; 

 for Bos worth Field brought him by a short road to 

 Canterbury, the Chancellorship and a red hat. 

 He was, however, a mighty builder, who left his 

 mark in the Fens during his few years of the 



EAST GATEWAY O.\ THE KORT H 



