A Spymaster's Lair: The Unmissable Splendour of Hatfield House

Send us a textClive has just been to an event at Hatfield House, the palace to the North of London which stands as a monument to the political gene of the Cecil family.  John is more than equal to discussing this great country house and its treasures, which the present Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury are subtly making even more special.In the 16th-century, Robert Cecil inherited it from his father Lord Burghley, whom he followed as Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister.  It was Cecil who did more than anyone to negotiate the succession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne on Elizabeth’s death as James I.  James stopped at Cecil’s house of Theobalds on his stately journey south to claim the crown.  Sickly and, like the King, somewhat misshapen, Cecil became James’s first minister, a position bolstered after the role he played in uncovering the Gunpowder Plot; he was created Earl of Salisbury. James had little affection for the old palace at Hatfield, which had been little used since Queen Elizabeth had spent her girlhood there.  On the other hand, as an addict of hunting he enjoyed his visits to Theobalds, expressing his admiration by the backhanded means of proposing a swop.  At Hatfield, Cecil showed his disgust for the old building by demolishing three-quarters of it, and building the present house to the designs of Robert Lemyinge, who had begun life as a carpenter.  Help was enlisted from the Surveyor of the King’s Works, Simon Basil, and the great Inigo Jones – too late, presumably, for him to do more than sprinkle some Italianate stardust on the south front of an otherwise old-fashioned pile.Hatfield has always been a political house and so it remains.  The present Lord Salisbury, great-great-grandson of the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, was responsible, as leader of the opposition in the House of Lords, for the coup of negotiating the survival of 91 hereditary peers when Tony Blair reformed the upper house in 1999.

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