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| The Old Palace, Hatfield House |
The one place my mother wanted to see more than any other on this trip was Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, where Elizabeth I had grown up and where she was living, under house arrest, on November 17, 1558 when Sir Nicholas Throckmorton* rides from London to tell Elizabeth her sister Mary I had died and she was now queen. Tradition has it that Elizabeth was standing under an oak tree when she heard the news and said, "This is the Lord's doing: it is marvelous in our eyes." Of course, we wanted to stand beneath that same oak tree. There were two small obstacles: the first was that the tree was a 20-minute walk and we were already tired.
