Hertfordshire cannot hope to rival such counties as Norfolk or Kent in its roll of distinguished names, but it can show a fairly long list of persons connected with the county who have been famous.

Since reference has already been made in several of the foregoing sections to the visits of English sovereigns to the county, or to their residence within its borders, very brief mention of the connection between royalty and the county will suffice in this place. Neither here nor elsewhere in these pages is any attempt made to give a complete list of such visits.

The names of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, and of Offa, king of Mercia, who had his palace at Offley, dying there in 796, will always be specially connected with Hertfordshire. In a somewhat less degree the same may be said of William the Conqueror, to whom, as already mentioned, the crown of this realm was offered at Berkhampstead. Edward II and Edward III frequently resided at Langley Palace, where Edmund de Langley, the founder of the White Rose faction, was born in 1341; and the same residence was also used by Richard II. Henry I and his consort Matilda were present at the dedication of St Albans’ Abbey on its completion by Abbot Paul; and Henry VI was at the first battle of St Albans, where he was wounded. Henry VIII, as mentioned on page 82, was still more intimately connected with Hertfordshire, and the manor of Hitchin was conferred by him in turn on Anne Boleyn and her successors. Reference has already been made to the residence of Queen Mary, in her youth, at Ashridge, and of Queen Elizabeth (before her ascent to the throne) both there and at Hatfield; while, as sovereign, Elizabeth also visited St Albans on two or three occasions as the guest of Sir Nicholas Bacon at Gorhambury, and also went to other great houses in the county. James I, as mentioned on the same page, spent much time at Royston, and died at Theobalds. The Rye House plot, so called from the meeting-place of the conspirators at Broxbourne, as stated in an earlier section, was devised for the purpose of assassinating Charles II while on his way through the county.

In connection with personages of royal blood, mention may be made of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, whose name is so intimately associated with St Albans’ Abbey, to the monastery of which he was admitted a member in 1423; and also of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who was born at Sandridge in the eighteenth century, and built and endowed the almshouses bearing her name in St Albans.

Among great statesmen connected with the county a prominent place must be assigned to Queen Elizabeth’s councillors and favourites, Lord Burleigh and the Earl of Essex. To her reign likewise belongs Sir Nicholas Bacon, Keeper of the Great Seal, and owner of Gorhambury, where he died in 1578. Nearly a century later (1652), Gorhambury came into the possession of Sir Harbottle Grimston, well known as Speaker of the House of Commons.

Passing on to the Victorian age, we have two great statesmen, namely, Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston, both of whom lived at Brocket, where the former died; and, subsequently, the late Marquis of Salisbury, owner of stately Hatfield. The first Viscount Hampden, sometime Speaker of the House of Commons, was also a Hertfordshire man, with his residence at Kimpton Hoo. Cecil Rhodes, the South African premier and “Empire-builder,” likewise claims a place in the roll of honour of the county, having been born at Bishop’s Stortford rectory, and Commodore Anson, the great circumnavigator, though not a native, lived at Moor Park, where he died in 1762.

Dame Juliana Berners, imaginary prioress of Sopwell nunnery, who was supposed to have written the immortal Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle, the first work on angling ever published in England, has been shown to be a myth. Among names famous in literature and science the greatest connected with the county is perhaps that of the great philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord Verulam and Viscount St Albans, who, during his father’s residence at Gorhambury, lived in Verulam House, at the Pondyards. On the death of his father Sir Nicholas Bacon he succeeded to Gorhambury. By a curious error he is frequently called Lord Bacon, although no such title was ever in existence. John Bunyan claims a place among Hertfordshire literary worthies as he was connected with a chapel at Hitchin.

Two of the greatest literary names connected with the county are those of William Cowper the poet, and Charles Lamb, author of the Essays of Elia, unsurpassed as a master of delicately humorous prose, whether as essayist or letter-writer. The former was born at Berkhampstead rectory in the year 1731; but Lamb was chiefly a visitor to the county, though, as he tells us in the Essays, he was once a Hertfordshire landowner, and his cottage at West Hill Green, about 2½ miles from Puckeridge, still exists. Mackery End Farm was the residence of the Brutons, who were his relatives, and it was to their house that his visits were made; so that the neighbourhood is essentially Lamb’s country. It is a question whether the Lyttons or the beauties of Knebworth, their home, are the more famous. The great novelist, author of The Last Days of Pompeii, The Caxtons, and innumerable other tales, as well as such successful plays as The Lady of Lyons and Money, was best known to readers in the middle of the last century as Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, though he began life as Mr Bulwer and died Lord Lytton. His son, poet, Ambassador, and Viceroy, who wrote under the name of “Owen Meredith,” was scarcely less distinguished, and received an Earldom in 1880. Here, too, mention may be made of Mrs Thrale, the friend of Dr Johnson, who was often at Offley Place, where her husband, whose family was long connected with St Albans, was born. Offley Place was at this time a fine old Elizabethan mansion, although it has since been rebuilt. Gadebridge Park, Hemel Hempstead, was the residence of the great surgeon Sir Astley Paston Cooper. But a greater distinction attaches to the name of Rothamsted, near Harpenden, as being the residence of the late Sir John Bennet Lawes, Bart., who, with his scientific colleague Sir Henry Gilbert, conducted the experiments which made their names famous throughout the agricultural world. Sir John Lawes first obtained the idea of using fossilised phosphates for manure from Professor Henslow, the great Cambridge botanist (himself sometime a resident at Hall Place, St Albans), who sent him specimens obtained from the Essex “Crag,” with a suggestion that they might be used as a source of phosphoric acid. Yarrell, the naturalist, lies buried in Bayford churchyard, with many members of his family. Last in the scientific and literary list, we have the name of Sir John Evans, the great antiquarian and numismatist of Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, who died so recently as 1908. To Evans, in conjunction with the late Sir Joseph Prestwich, is mainly due the credit of definitely establishing the fact that the so-called flint “celts” are really the work of prehistoric man. His most important and best work is Ancient Stone Implements.

Among great ecclesiastics mention must be made of Nicholas Breakspear, born near Abbot’s Langley towards the close of the eleventh century, who subsequently became Pope as Adrian IV; being the only Englishman who has occupied the papal chair. Reference may also be made to Cardinal Wolsey, who spent a considerable portion of his time at Delamere House. Nor must we omit Young, the author of the Night Thoughts and Rector of Welwyn, or that great maker of hymns, Dr Watts, who as the 36-year guest of Sir Thomas Abney resided at Theobalds, where he died. Among distinguished lawyers, the most prominent name is that of Lord Grimthorpe (formerly Sir Edmund Beckett), who was, however, connected with the county, not in his professional capacity, but as the restorer of St Albans’ Abbey and other churches in the neighbourhood. Much criticism has been expended on Lord Grimthorpe’s modes of “restoration,” which were certainly of a drastic character. It must, however, be remembered that when he undertook the restoration of St Albans’ Abbey it was in a dangerous condition, and sufficient money was not forthcoming to make it secure. The result is that the abbey, although in many ways unlike its former self, will stand for centuries. Lord Grimthorpe, who was a Yorkshireman, built himself a residence at Batchwood, near St Albans.

As another well-known lawyer and also a judge, mention may be made of Lord Brampton (Sir Henry Hawkins), who came of a family long connected with Hitchin, at which town he was born.

Sir Henry Chauncy, the antiquary and historian of the county, to whom reference has so often been made in this book, lived, and died in 1700, at Yardley; and Balfe, the composer, made his home at Rowney Abbey, close by, till his death in 1870.