Part 20

But it was not until after his death that Hatfield came into possession of his family. He built Burghley House near Stamford in Lincolnshire, and left it to his younger son, Sir Robert Cecil. After Elizabeth's death, King James I. expressed a preference for Burghley over Hatfield, and an exchange was made by which Hatfield passed into possession of Sir Robert, who had succeeded his father as chief minister, and, though in weak health and of small stature, was a wise and faithful servant of the queen and of her successor. In Elizabeth's last illness, when she persisted in sitting propped up on a stool by pillows, he urged her to rest herself, and inadvertently said she "must go to bed." The queen fired up. "Must!" cried she. "Is _must_ a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man, thy father if he had been alive durst not have used that word." Sir Robert did not survive the queen many years, and to him King James's peaceful succession to the throne is said to have been greatly due. The king made him the Earl of Salisbury, and the title descended for several generations, until, in 1773, the seventh earl was promoted to the rank of marquis, and now Robert Cecil, the third Marquis of Salisbury and one of the leaders of the Conservative party, presides over the estates at Hatfield. The chief entrance to Hatfield House is on the northern side, and above it rises a cupola. The buildings form three sides of an oblong, the longer line fronting the north and the two wings pointing towards the south. They are of brick, with stone dressings and facings, and are admired as a faithful example of the excellent domestic architecture of the early part of the seventeenth century. The approach through the park from the town is of great beauty, the grand avenue, bordered by stately trees, conducting the visitor to a court in front of the house enclosed by a balustrade with handsome gates. Within the building the most remarkable features are the galleries, extending along the entire southern front. The gallery on the ground floor was formerly a corridor, open on one side to the air; but at a comparatively recent period this has been enclosed with glass, and thus converted into a gallery paved with black and white marble, and ornamented with arms and armor, some being trophies from the Armada and others from the Crimea. Here is the rich saddle-cloth used on the white steed that Queen Elizabeth rode at Tilbury. There are a fine chapel and attractive state-apartments, but around the old house there lingers a tale of sorrow. The western wing was burned in 1835, and the dowager marchioness, the grandmother of the present marquis, then five years old, perished in the flames, which originated in her chamber. This wing has been finely restored, and the room in which she was burned contains her portrait, an oval medallion let into the wall over the fireplace. It is the sweet and sunny face of a young girl, and her tragic fate in helpless age reminds of Solon's warning as we look at the picture: "Count no one happy till he dies." In the gallery at Hatfield are portraits of King Henry VIII. and all six of his wives. In the library, which is rich in historical documents, is the pedigree of Queen Elizabeth, emblazoned in 1559, and tracing her ancestry in a direct line back to Adam! The state bedrooms have been occupied by King James, Cromwell, and Queen Victoria. In the gardens, not far from the house, is the site of the old episcopal palace of Bishops Hatfield, of which one side remains standing, with the quaint gatehouse now used as an avenue of approach up the hill from the town to the stables. There is a fine view of the town through the ancient gateway. Here lived the princess Elizabeth, and in the halls where kings have banqueted the marquis's horses now munch their oats. Immediately below, in the town, is Salisbury Chapel, in which repose the bones of his ancestors.

Also in Hertfordshire are Cassiobury, the seat of the Earls of Essex, whose ancestor, Lord Capel, who was beheaded in 1648 for his loyalty to King Charles I., brought the estate into the family by his marriage with Elizabeth Morison; and Knebworth, the home of Lord Lytton the novelist, which has been the home of his ancestors since the time of Henry VII., when it was bought by Sir Robert Lytton. The "Great Bed of Ware" is one of the curiosities of the county--a vast bed twelve feet square, originally at the Saracen's Head Inn. It was built for King Edward IV., and was curiously carved, and has had a distinguished place in English literary allusions. The bed still exists at Rye House in Hertfordshire, where it was removed a few years ago. A dozen people have slept in it at the same time.

AUDLEY END AND SAFFRON WALDEN.

Journeying farther from London, and into the county of Essex, we come to the little river Cam, and on the side of its valley, among the gentle undulations of the Essex uplands, is seen the palace of Audley End, and beyond it the village of Saffron Walden. Here in earlier times was the abbey of Walden, which, when dissolved by Henry VIII., was granted to Sir Thomas Audley, who then stood high in royal favor. But almost all remains of this abbey have disappeared, and Sir Thomas, who was Speaker of the House, got the grant because of his industry in promoting the king's wishes for the dissolution of the religious houses, and was also made Lord Audley of Walden. This, as Fuller tells us, was "a dainty morsel, an excellent receipt to clear the Speaker's voice, and make him speak clear and well for his master." But he did not live long to enjoy it, although giving the estate his name, and it passed ultimately to the Duke of Norfolk, after whose execution it became the property of his son, Lord Thomas Howard, whom Queen Elizabeth made Baron Walden, and King James appointed lord treasurer and promoted to be Earl of Suffolk. He built the great palace of Audley End, which was intended to eclipse every palace then existing in England. It was begun in 1603, and was finished in 1616, the date still remaining upon one of the gateways. King James twice visited Audley End while building, and is said to have remarked, as he viewed its enormous proportions, that the house was too large for a king, though it might do for a lord treasurer. It cost over $1,000,000, but no accurate account was kept, and the earl was so straitened by the outlay, that after being dismissed from office he was compelled to sell out several other estates, and died nearly $200,000 in debt. The second and third earls tried to maintain the white elephant, but found it too heavy a burden, and the latter sold the house to King Charles II. for $250,000, of which $100,000 remained on mortgage. It was known as the New Palace, and became a royal residence. It consisted of a large outer court and a smaller inner one. Around these the buildings were constructed from one to three stories high, with towers at the corners and centres of the fronts. The impression produced by the design is said not to have been very favorable, it being insufficiently grand for so vast a pile, and while it was a pleasant residence in summer, the want of facilities for heating made it in winter little better than a barn. When Pepys visited Audley End in 1660 and 1668, his chief impression seems to have been of the cellars, for he writes: "Only the gallery is good, and, above all things, the cellars, where we went down and drank of much good liquor. And, indeed, the cellars are fine, and here my wife and I did sing, to my great content." It was in the following year that the house was sold to the king. In 1701, however, it passed back to the fifth Earl of Suffolk, and about twenty years later a large part of the structure was taken down. Three sides of the great court, including the gallery referred to by Pepys, were demolished, and Audley End was reduced to the buildings around the smaller quadrangle; this was further reduced in 1749, so that the house assumed its present appearance of three sides of a square, open towards the east, and thus remains an excellent type of an early Jacobean mansion, its best view being from the garden front. Within it has fine apartments, and contains the only authentic portrait of George II. that is known. This king would never sit for his picture, and the artist by stealth sketched his likeness from a closet near the staircase of Kensington Palace, where he had an excellent view of the peculiar monarch. It is, as Thackeray says, the picture of a "red-faced, staring princeling," but is believed true to nature nevertheless. Lady Suffolk, it seems, was one of his few favorites. Audley End has been for a long time in possession of the Barons of Braybrooke, and is their principal seat. Lord Cornwallis, of American Revolutionary remembrance, was a member of this family, and his portrait is preserved here.

Over the undulating surface of the park, barely a mile away, can be seen the pretty spire of Saffron Walden Church, with the village clustering around it. Here on a hill stand the church and the castle, originally of Walden, but from the extensive cultivation of saffron in the neighborhood the town came to have that prefix given it; it was grown there from the time of Edward III., and the ancient historian Fuller quaintly tells us "it is a most admirable cordial, and under God I owe my life, when sick with the small-pox, to the efficacy thereof." Fuller goes on to tell us that "the sovereign power of genuine saffron is plainly proved by the antipathy of the crocodile thereto; for the crocodile's tears are never true save when he is forced where saffron groweth, whence he hath his name of croco-deilos, or the saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all poison, and it all antidote." Saffron attained its highest price at Walden in Charles II.'s time, when it was as high as twenty dollars a pound, but its disuse in medicine caused its value to diminish, and at the close of the last century its culture had entirely disappeared from Walden, though the prefix still clings to the name of the town. While saffron was declining, this neighborhood became a great producer of truffles, and the dogs were trained here to hunt the fungus that is so dear to the epicure's palate. The church of St. Mary, which is a fine Perpendicular structure and the most conspicuous feature of Saffron Walden, was built about four hundred years ago, though the slender spire crowning its western tower is of later date, having been built in the present century. In the church are buried the six Earls of Suffolk who lived at Audley End, and all of whom died between 1709 and 1745. The ruins of the ancient castle, consisting chiefly of a portion of the keep and some rough arches, are not far from the church, and little is known of its origin. There is a museum near the ruins which contains some interesting antiquities and a fine natural-history collection. The newly-constructed town-hall, built in antique style, overhanging the footway and supported on arches, is one of the most interesting buildings in Saffron Walden: the mayor and corporation meeting here date their charter from 1549. Not far away, at Newport, lived Nell Gwynn in a modest cottage with a royal crown over the door. She was one of the numerous mistresses of Charles II., and is said to have been the only one who remained faithful to him. She bore him two sons, one dying in childhood, and the other becoming the Duke of St. Albans, a title created in 1684, and still continued in the persons of his descendants of the family of Beauclerc. Nell was originally an orange-girl who developed into a variety actress, and, fascinating the king, he bought her from Lord Buckhurst, her lover, for an earldom and a pension. Nell is said to have cost the king over $300,000 in four years. She had her good qualities and was very popular in England, and she persuaded the king to found Chelsea Hospital for disabled soldiers, and he also bore her genuine affection, for his dying words were, "Let not poor Nelly starve." She survived him about seven years. Also in the neighborhood, at Littlebury, was the home of Winstanley, the builder of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, who perished in it when it was destroyed by a terrific storm in 1703.

Digressing down to the coast of Essex, on the North Sea, we find at the confluence of the Stour and Orwell the best harbor on that side of England, bordered by the narrow and old-fashioned streets of the ancient seaport of Harwich. Here vast fleets seek shelter in easterly gales behind the breakwater that is run out from the Beacon Hill. From here sail many steamers to Rotterdam and Antwerp in connection with the railways from London, and the harbor-entrance is protected by the ancient Languard Fort, built by James I. on a projecting spit of land now joined to the Suffolk coast to the northward. One of the most interesting scenes at Harwich is a group of old wrecks that has been utilized for a series of jetties in connection with a shipbuilder's yard. Weather-beaten and battered, they have been moored in a placid haven, even though it be on the unpicturesque coast of Essex.

CAMBRIDGE.

Returning to the valley of the Cam, we will follow it down to the great university city of Cambridge, fifty-eight miles north of London. It stands in a wide and open valley, and is built on both banks of the river, which is navigable up to this point, so that the town is literally the "Bridge over the Cam." The situation is not so picturesque or so favorable as that of the sister university city of Oxford, but it is nevertheless an attractive city, the stately buildings being admirably set off by groups and avenues of magnificent trees that flourish nowhere to better advantage than in English scenery. The chief colleges are ranged along the right bank of the Cam, with their fronts away from the water, while behind each there is a sweep of deliciously green meadowland known as the "Backs of the Colleges," surrounded by trees, and with a leafy screen of foliage making the background beyond the buildings. While the greater part of modern Cambridge is thus on the right bank of the river, the oldest portion was located on a low plateau forming the opposite shore. It is uncertain when the university was first established there. Henry Beauclerc, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, studied the arts and sciences at Cambridge, and when he became king he bestowed many privileges upon the town and fixed a regular ferry over the Cam. By the thirteenth century scholars had assembled there and become a recognized body, according to writs issued by Henry III. In 1270 the title of a university was formally bestowed, and the oldest known collegiate foundation--Peterhouse, or St. Peter's College--had been established a few years before. Cambridge has in all seventeen colleges, and the present act of incorporation was granted by Queen Elizabeth. The Duke of Devonshire is the chancellor. The student graduates either "in Honors" or "in the Poll." In the former case he can obtain a distinction in mathematics, classics, the sciences, theology, etc. The names of the successful students are arranged in three classes in a list called the Tripos, a name derived from the three-legged stool whereon sat in former days one of the bachelors, who recited a set of satirical verses at the time the degrees were conferred. In the Mathematical Tripos the first class are called Wranglers, and the others Senior and Junior Optimes. Thus graduate the "Dons" of Cambridge.

TRINITY AND ST. JOHN'S COLLEGES.

Let us now take a brief review of the seventeen colleges of Cambridge. In Trinity Street is Trinity College, founded in 1546 by Henry VIII. It consists of four quadrangular courts, the Great Court being the largest quadrangle in the university, and entered from the street by the grand entrance-tower known as the King's Gateway. On the northern side of the quadrangle are the chapel and King Edward's Court, and in the centre of the southern side the Queen's Tower, with a statue of Queen Mary. In the centre of the quadrangle is a quaint conduit. The chapel is a plain wainscoted room, with an ante-chapel filled with busts of former members of the college--among them Bacon and Macaulay--and also a noble statue of Newton. Trinity College Hall is one hundred feet long and the finest in Cambridge, its walls being adorned with several portraits. It was in Trinity that Byron, Dryden, Cowley, Herbert, and Tennyson were all students. There are said to be few spectacles more impressive than the choral service on Sunday evening in term-time, when Trinity Chapel is crowded with surpliced students. In the Master's Lodge, on the western side of the quadrangle, are the state-apartments where royalty is lodged when visiting Cambridge, and here also in special apartments the judges are housed when on circuit. Through screens or passages in the hall the second quadrangle, Neville's Court, is entered, named for a master of the college who died in 1615. Here is the library, an attractive apartment supported on columns, which contains Newton's telescope and some of his manuscripts, and also a statue of Byron. The King's (or New) Court, is a modern addition, built in the present century at a cost of $200,000. From this the College Walks open on the western side, the view from the gateway looking down the long avenue of lime trees being strikingly beautiful. The Master's Court is the fourth quadrangle.

Adjoining Trinity is its rival, St. John's College, also consisting of four courts, though one of them is of modern construction and on the opposite bank of the river. This college was founded by the countess Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., and opened in 1516, having been for three centuries previously a hospital. It is generally regarded from this circumstance as being the oldest college at Cambridge. The gateway is a tower of mingled brick and stone and one of the earliest structures of the college. Entering it, on the opposite side of the court is seen the New Chapel, but recently completed, a grand edifice one hundred and seventy-two feet long and sixty-three feet high, with a surmounting tower whose interior space is open and rises eighty-four feet above the pavement. The roof and the windows are richly colored, and variegated marbles have been employed in the interior decoration. The eastern end is a five-sided apse; the ceiling is vaulted in oak, while the chapel has a magnificent screen. Between the first and second courts is the hall, recently enlarged and decorated, and the library is on the northern side of the third court. It is a picturesque room of James I.'s time, with a timbered roof, whitened walls, and carved oaken bookcases black with age. The second court is of earlier date, and a fine specimen of sixteenth-century brickwork. On the southern side is an octagonal turret, at the top of which is the queer little room occupied by Dr. Wood, whose statue is in the chapel. When he first came to college from his humble home in the north of England he was so poor that he studied by the light of the staircase candle, and wrapped his feet in wisps of hay in winter to save the cost of a fire. He became the Senior Wrangler, and in due course a Fellow, and ultimately master of the college. To this was added the deanery of Ely. Dying, he bequeathed his moderate fortune for the aid of poor students and the benefit of his college. Of the third court the cloister on the western side fronts the river. The New Court, across the Cam, is a handsome structure, faced with stone and surmounted by a tower. A covered Gothic bridge leads to it over the river from the older parts of the college. In the garden along the river, known as the Wilderness, Prior the poet is said to have laid out the walks. Here among the students who have taken recreation have been Wordsworth and Herschel, Wilberforce and Stillingfleet.

CAIUS AND CLARE COLLEGES.

It took two founders to establish Gonville and Caius College, and both their names are preserved in the title, though it is best known as Caius (pronounced Keys) College. Its buildings were ancient, but have been greatly changed in the present century, so that the chief entrance is now beneath a lofty tower, part of the New Court and fronting the Senate House. This New Court is a fine building, ornamented with busts of the most conspicuous men of Caius. Beyond is the smaller or Caius Court of this college, constructed in the sixteenth century. The "Gate of Virtue and Wisdom" connects them, and is surmounted by an odd turret. On the other side is the "Gate of Honor," a good specimen of the Renaissance. The "Gate of Humility" was removed in rebuilding the New Court. Thus did this college give its students veritable sermons in stones. The founders of Caius were physicians, and among its most eminent members were Hervey and Jeremy Taylor. Adjoining Caius is Trinity Hall, as noted for the law as its neighbor is for medicine, and immediately to the south is a group of university buildings. Among these is the Senate House, opened in 1730, where the university degrees are conferred. It has a fine interior, especially the ceiling, and among the statues is an impressive one of the younger Pitt. The most exciting scene in the Senate House is when the result of the mathematical examination is announced. This for a long time was almost the only path to distinction at Cambridge. When all are assembled upon a certain Friday morning in January, one of the examiners stands up in the centre of the western gallery and just as the clock strikes nine proclaims to the crowd the name of the "Senior Wrangler," or first student of the year, with a result of deafening cheers; then the remainder of the list is read. On the following day the recipients of degrees and visitors sit on the lower benches, and the undergraduates cram the galleries. Then with much pomp the favored student is conducted to the vice-chancellor to receive his first degree alone. The University Library is near by, and, as it gets a copy of every book entered for English copyright, it has become a large one. Some of the manuscripts it contains are very valuable, particularly the _Codex Beza_, a manuscript of the Gospels given in 1581 by Beza.