istration, is such an endowment as would render it independent of the Victorian Parliament, as regards the salaries of its officers. A gift or bequest of 20,000l. or 30,000l. for this purpose, from an absentee colonist, would confer upon the institution a very great boon. Its trustees are a corporate body, but they have no estate; and the Government for the time being claims to exercise the official patronage. Now this is liable to serious abuses; because it is apt to be administered upon political grounds exclusively, and without regard to the fitness of the persons appointed to the vacant posts. A glaring instance of this kind occurred about three years ago, when a comparatively illiterate person was appointed to the important and responsible post of Parliamentary librarian. The appointment was condemned as scandalous by the press of the colony, and when a change of Ministry occurred, the obnoxious appointee was dismissed, to be subsequently re

instated in defiance of public opinion. A precisely similar incident might occur in connection with the Melbourne Public Library; and, if it were to happen, it would be both a calamity and a disgrace. But if the salaries of the various officials connected with it were derived from the interest of an invested endowment fund, the trustees could then claim the exercise of the necessary patronage, and would be guided, in so doing, by considerations of the interest, welfare, dignity, and utility of the institution entrusted to their control; an institution of the highest value and importance to the mental culture of the great mass of the people of Victoria, and a lasting monument to the public spirit, the foresight, and the enlightened patriotism of the late Sir Redmond Barry.

H. MORTIMER FRANKLYN.

Melbourne, November, 1881.

I.

AN order of King Henry VIIIth's Council, bearing date December 2, 1533, nearly three months after the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, runs as follows:

"The King's Highness hath appointed that the Lady Princess Elizabeth shall be conveyed from hence towards Hatfield upon Wednesday the next week, and that on Wednesday night to repose and lie at the house of the Earl of Rutland in Enfield, and the next day to be conveyed to Hatfield, and there to remain with such Family in household as the King's Highness has assigned and established for the same."

The early history of Hatfield, with which Elizabeth thus, in the beginning of her life, became connected, must not detain us here, though it is one of those old English manors whose story is quaint and curious. The manor, originally a royal possession, had belonged to the See of Ely from the days of St. Dunstan till the time of Henry VIII., when it again became crown property, and a bishop's palace had all along existed there; but the palace to which Elizabeth was brought was then only half a century old, having been built by Morton, Henry VIIth's great chancellor and archbishop, during his tenancy of the Bishopric of Ely from 1478 to 1486. Morton was a great builder. The palaces at Canterbury, at Knowle, the Manor House at Lambeth, the episcopal residences at Maidstone, Addington Park, Ford, and Charing, were all either added to or rebuilt, by him; and it is probable that he was his own architect.

The conclusion of the Wars of the Roses, and the consequent settlement of the country, caused a considerable modification in the palaces and mansions built in the latter part of the

fifteenth century. The necessity for a defensive structure was less felt, and

though the characteristic style of the castle and fortified house was not entirely abandoned, yet buttress, tower, keep, and embattlements, instead of being enforced by necessity, had become a mere embellishment; and the demands of a generous hospitality, and of extended ideas of comfort, were answered by the introduction of important new features. The quadrangular area came in; halls and state apartments—a withdrawing-room for the guests, a presence chamber, parlours both for winter and summer, and an apartment for ladies enormous size by comparison with the past, were now become indispensable. For the accommodation of a large household, a great number of private rooms had to be provided, which, though wofully small and incommodious when measured by modern ideas, contrasted very favourably with those of a previous age.

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Hatfield Palace well exhibited these characteristics. It was a quadrangle of 218 feet square, external measure ment. Standing on the crest of the hill overlooking the church and town, it had its principal entrance on the east or opposite side, where ran the approach to it from London. Passing through the east gates, a broad walk divided the inner court, leading up to the still existing West Tower. When the present Hatfield House was built in 1611 by Sir Robert Cecil, three sides of the quadrangle were pulled down, and the west side only now stands. It consists of a double tower flanked by two wings, which formed the banqueting hall of the palace. At the centre of the hall are two doors, the one to the west having been the entrance to the palace from

the town, and the other, to the east, gave access to the inner courtyard. At the south end of the hall was the withdrawing-room, and next to it was the chapel, chapel, which has now disappeared. At the north end were several living rooms, and beyond an archway, through which ran a road leading round to the east or principal front of the palace. The ground plan of the whole is still preserved among the Hatfield MSS., and is engraved by Robinson in his Vitruvius Britannicus. It shows that there was another large apartment, on the west side, facing the garden; the remainder of the rooms, fourteen in number, being of more moderate dimensions.

Defences were abandoned in the palace, but the spirit of the feudal castle remained in its buttresses, towers, and battlements. The exterior West Tower now remaining, with its circular loopholed staircase, small chambers, with high windows and wide hearths, is a miniature copy of the Norman keep. The building is of brick. The use of brick, which had been employed by the Romans in this country, had been lost till the reign of Richard II., when it was reintroduced, principally for monasteries. By Henry VIth's time it was gradually displacing timber for dwellinghouses, and stone for castles, churches, religious houses, and palaces; the change of material being largely brought about, in the latter cases, by the change in design which has been traced above.

usual at the time, the external walls were ornamented here and there with glazed or vitrified bricks, disposed in squares and lozenges.

The banqueting hall, though now used as a stable, is a room whose fine proportions, stained glass windows, and high-pitched, open chestnut roof, springing from fanciful corbels, recall its original purpose. The high-pitched timber-frame roof, "jointed with admirable contrivance,' was a feature of the halls of this date. "The boldness of projection, and the beauty of unpainted oak or chestnut, upon a grand scale, never attained to greater excellence than at this time," says Dallaway; and the Hatfield roof is an admirable specimen. The present internal fittings of the hall are of course all modern. The dais at the upper end, with its high table, and the benches and forms for the household and dependants have disappeared. The windows, partly of stained glass, remind us that glass windows were at the time still the luxury of the great.

Some yards west of the north-west corner of the palace stands the gatehouse, which gave admission from the town to the west entrance. This building, including the cottages adjoining, is the only other relic of Bishop Morton's time. The windows, and the ornamentations in vitrified brick here seen, are strictly in keeping with the palace. In the gatehouse, and over the gateway itself, is a room which contained till recently on its smoke-stained walls a curious fresco representing a battle, now, however, all but obliterated. Such painting in fresco on walls was in use from the time of Henry III. to Elizabeth. In Henry VIII.'s reign tapestry, becoming somewhat cheaper, began to be more generally used for the better apartments. It is not improbable, therefore, that this fragment of fresco is but a sample of the decorations of all the ordinary chambers of the old palace.

Baker and Godwin, the chroniclers, both mention the great cost which

the bishop bestowed upon the palace, and Camden, in his Britannia, speaks of the beautiful manner in which it was fitted up. It must have been a noted building in its day, both as one of the residences of the powerful churchman, and on its own architectural merits. The monasteries were at this time at the very height of their magnificence, and we may well conclude that the bishop's palaces were no whit behind other ecclesiastical buildings in luxury, display, and splendid hospitality. The bishops' households at Hatfield from Edgar to Henry VIIIth no doubt consisted of monks of the Benedictine order, to which Ely belonged. It must have been with great regret that the villagers saw the last of the jolly brethren pass down the hill when the palace was taken over by Henry VIII. The open

handed charities of the orders had so endeared them to the common people, and so blinded them to their eal evils that it was, says a contemporary author, "a pitiful thing to hear the lamentations that the country people made for them." West, too, the last of the Ely bishops who held Hatfield, was noted to have lived in the greatest splendour of any prelate of his time," and to have relieved 200 poor people daily at his gate with meat and drink.

At the end of 1533, as we have seen, Elizabeth was sent down to Hatfield, which the king had evidently then decided on acquiring, though the transfer was not made till some months afterwards. In 1534 West died, and Bishop Goodrich was appointed by Henry to the vacant see. Following a timehonoured custom, Henry "robbed Peter to pay Paul," and in exchange for Hatfield, conveyed to the Bishop other church lands which had before undergone the same process of "conveyance," in Pistol's sense, at his own hands. A document in the Exchequer Queen's Remembrancer Accounts gives the valuation of the manor at the time of transfer. In it the "fine and ornate mansion, with the many edifices

thereto annexed, on the east side of the church," was valued at 2,000l.

It is said that the king himself occasionally resided at Hatfield; he assembled the Privy Council there for six days in August, 1541; but his favourite residences were Richmond, Hampton Court, Windsor, Eltham, and Woodstock. It was as a nursery for his children that he acquired the palace and manor, as he had done Enfield and Hunsdon. The name was altered for a short time to Hatfield Regis, but retook its old form of Bishop's Hatfield.

Lady Margaret Bryan, the wife of Sir Thomas Bryan, Kt., and afterwards Baroness Bryan, who had been appointed "Lady Mistress" of the Princess Mary shortly after her birth, was now placed in charge of the infant Elizabeth at Hatfield, possibly without entirely relinquishing her connection with Mary, as Mary and Elizabeth were frequently under the same roof until Henry's death. There is a letter extant from Lady Bryan to Lord Cromwell from Hunsdon, written on behalf of Elizabeth, complaining of the child being put from "that degree she was afore," and of the scantiness of her wardrobe, "for she hath neither gown nor kertel, nor petecot, nor no maner of linnin;" also that Master Shelton-an officer of the household— will have Elizabeth to dine at the "board of estate," which she herself thinks is not mete for a child of her age, and prejudicial to her health, on account of the divers meats, fruits, and wines, and to her behaviour, as there is 66 no place for correction there." "A mess of meat in her own lodging" is what Lady Bryan proposes. She then speaks of the great pain the child endures in cutting her great teeth, which makes the Lady Mistress "to suffer her grace to have her will more than I would. I trust to God, an her teeth were well graft, to have her grace after another fashion, than she is yet," adds the guardian quaintly, "for she is as toward a child, and as gentle of conditions, as ever I knew one in my life."

Hunsdon, near Hoddesdon, Herts, was Mary's usual and favourite residence, Hatfield being Elizabeth's, and Prince Edward dividing his time between Hatfield, Hertford Castle, and Ampthill, Beds. It appears from Mary's "Privy Purse Expenses," that she paid a visit to Hatfield in January 1537, and again in March of the same year. Numerous entries of gifts of jewelry and dresses from one sister to the other appear in this account, which extends from 1536 to 1544, and shows that they were frequently together, at times, indeed, having but one household. Their intercourse, then, as far as can be judged, was most affectionate. The ban under which they were both laid by Henry no doubt helped to draw them together in sympathy. In 1537, when five years old, Elizabeth is recorded to have given Mary a pair of "hosen gold and silk," and in 1540 she presents her brother Edward with " a shyrte of cameryke of her own woorkynge." She was then but eight years old. A glimpse is afforded

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us of the establishment at Hatfield Palace at this time by the counts of reparations to the King's Palaces in March, April, and May, 1542. The account relating to Hatfield is for "reparations done against my lord prince's grace coming thither," Edward being then in his fifth year. The carpenters were at work at 7d. and 8d. a day, in making a new boltinghouse, and troughs for flour and meal, framing planks for dressers in the "pastry" and larder, and mending the tables and trestles in the hall, and the "jowpets" in the great chamber. The bricklayers, at 6d. a day, made a furnace for the boiling-house, underpinned the new bolting-house, and laid a tiled roof upon it. The plasterers mended the walls of the stables and garner. The glaziers were busy, some few new panes of glass being supplied, but in the majority of cases the old ones were mended. The rooms mentioned are Mr. Controller's lodgings, the Lady Mistress's lodgings (Lady No. 269-VOL. XLV.

Bryan, who had been so appointed at Edward's birth), the chapel, the vestry, the High Chamberlain's, and Mr. Fey the Chamberlain's lodgings, the lodgings of the Steward, the Clerk of the Spicery, and of Lady Lyncoln. Finally the orchard was mown, the alleys "pared," and the trees pruned: The account is signed by John Cornwallis, steward, and Richard Cotton, comptroller. Sir John Cornwallis, the Steward of Edward's Household, was the ancestor of the Earls and Marquises Cornwallis. Richard Cotton, Comptroller of his Household, was knighted by Edward on his accession. The High Chamberlain was Sir William Sydney, the ancestor of the Earls of Leicester, made in 1544 Steward of Edward's Household. It is probable that the three royal children spent the whole of the summer and autumn of this year, 1542, together at Hatfield, for we find from Mary's "Privy Purse Expenses" that on going to her father in London in December of this year she made presents to Edward's underofficers; Elizabeth's presence also being shown by various entries of gifts to her from Mary. The officers were those of the Pantry, the Buttery, the Cellar, the Ewry, the Kitchen, the Larder, the Squyllary (Scullery), the Chaundry (Chandlery), the Pastry, the Scalding House, the Boiling House, and the Poultry, the marshal and ushers of the hall, the porters at the gate, and the guard of the beds. Presents were also given to the children of the kitchen, the pastry, and the squyllary, and the drawer of the buttery.

During all this time of residence at Hatfield, varied by visits to Hunsdon or Ashridge, Elizabeth was making great progress in her education. Her first governess, or "tutoress," was Lady Champernoun, the wife of Sir Philip Champernoun. Ascham mentions the "counsels of this accom-" plished lady," as having contributed to Elizabeth's advancement in learning, and Bohun describes her "as a person of great worth, who formed this great wit (Elizabeth) from her

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