1 12 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



were laid down. Hatfield should be on the E plan, 

 a long run of building with a middle entry looking 

 due south between massive wings. There was 

 nothing left but to seek a builder, and, having found 

 Thomas Limminge, to set him at once to work on a 

 house whose glass and stone, ironwork and wood- 

 work and the like would be supplied by a dozen 

 contracts. Glazier and stonemason, smith and joiner, 

 painter and plumber would send each his men for 

 their own share of the labour. With all the cares of 

 the State on his back, the Earl remained his own archi- 

 tect, Limminge following the first " plot " of the 

 house, directed by a stream of letters from his patron 

 and now and again badgered by a surveyor sent down 

 to learn why they needed so many bricks or how it 



something of a figure during the Commonwealth, 

 which voted him a marquessate while he sat in the 

 Commons. James, the fourth Earl, is remembered 

 only for his desperate shuffling when William of 

 Orange was on the high seas ; and his son, for his 

 marriage with the heiress of Tuftons, Cavendishes and 

 Ogles. They live retired as though Hatfield were a 

 house of religion, until the sixth Earl leaves hardly a 

 trace of his sixty-six years of life save parish register 

 entries of his christening and death and of his 

 marriage with the rector's sister. After him came a 

 certain reaction. His son, noted at the end of 

 George III.'s reign as "a specimen of the gentleman 

 of the last generation," was created a Marquess, and 

 took some part in public affairs. The Marchioness, 



SOUTH FRONT, SHOWING THE LENGTH OF THE LONG GALLERY. 



came that the glazing was delayed. In July, 1611, 

 the builder reports that the work is all but ended, 

 and that the new palace of Hatfield will soon be 

 ready for occupation. But the great little Minister 

 was to have no joy of his fine house, to keep no 

 house-warming there for his neighbours. Within a 

 month of that report from Hatfield, Theodore 

 Mayerne, his cunning French physician, had examined 

 my lord and found the signs of death upon him. In 

 the spring he came indeed to Hatfield, but by slow 

 stages in a hearse, to be laid quietly in his new vault. 

 After him, his son, the second Earl, made Hatfield 

 his dwelling, and ever since it has been the seat of 

 the race. But many generations were to pass before 

 a lord of Hatfield was again at the State's helm. 

 The second Earl's rank and consequence made him 



whose youth lingers upon a glorious canvas by 

 Reynolds, hunted the Hatfield Hounds until, at 

 seventy-eight, she could no longer face the leap at a 

 gate. A merciless fate spared the neck of this 

 staunch huntress, who died terribly, burned in her 

 room by a fire which wrecked the west wing of 

 Hatfield. How her grandson brought back all the 

 honours of the house, and how Hatfield came once 

 again to be a statesman's renowned seat, is a history 

 that is still in all men's minds. 



High over the main entry of the house one sees 

 the date of 161 1, the date at which an end was made 

 of its building, and Hatfield in the mass is still a fair 

 picture of the house which left Limminge's hands. 

 The accounts for the building check each contractor's 

 share, and by them we may even note that there were 



