So delighted was King Jamie with Theobalds and the hunting afforded by its domain, as well as in the adjoining Enfield Chase and Waltham Forest, that he prevailed upon the noble owner to exchange it for Hatfield, and the latter has since that time (1608) remained the home of the Cecils. The king enlarged the park of Theobalds, which he enclosed with a wall ten miles in circumference. He passed nearly all his leisure here, and died at Theobalds on March 25, 1625.
Charles I. also received homage at Theobalds upon his succession to the throne, but he had not that affection for the place which his father displayed. He retired hither, however, at the end of 1641, or beginning of 1642, to escape the unpleasantness of State affairs, and in February of the latter year here received the solemn remonstrance of Parliament. Hence he set out a month later, with a body of adherents, to raise the Royal Standard at Nottingham. It is by some stated that the unfortunate king wrote a portion of the “Eikon Basilike” at Theobalds.
That strange passion for destruction which possessed Cromwell and the Parliamentarians moved these ignorant sectarians to destroy the handsome palace reared by Lord Burleigh, and enlarged and beautified by James I.; its rich contents were dispersed, and its beautiful gardens ruthlessly destroyed.
Charles II. bestowed the manor of Theobalds upon General Monk—for the consideration of £12,067 6s. 8d.—and created him Duke of Albemarle. It descended to the Duke of Montagu, and later to the Cromwell family, then with the estate of Cheshunt Park to the Russells, subsequently became the property of Sir George Prescott, and finally was purchased by the late Sir Henry Meux, Bart. In 1712, when Sir Thomas Abney lived at Theobalds, he persuaded Dr. Isaac Watts to retire hither. During his thirty-six years’ residence here the learned divine wrote his famous hymns and songs, and died in 1748 at the age of seventy-four.
CHAPTER IV. CHESHUNT AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
OLD Cheshunt village is a little less than a mile north of Theobalds by the road that turns up the hill, opposite Temple Bar, to Bury Green, thence leaving the cemetery on the left. A pleasant old-fashioned inn, where the magisterial business was dispensed for many years, and a small cluster of houses form the old village to-day, with Cheshunt College, a foundation by Selina Countess of Huntingdon, for the training of Nonconformist ministers, hard by, and the fine old parish church reposing in its ample “God’s Acre,” opposite. But in quite recent times the builder has been busy in this locality, and at the bottom of the village a good many houses of the suburban villa type have been erected. The most populous part of Cheshunt has grown up along either side of the high road, here known as Cheshunt Street, nearly half a mile distant, eastward, leaving the old village isolated, as it were. But it was here that stood the fine old mansions for which the parish was once famed, grouped around and about the church. Of these more presently. Meantime a walk may profitably be taken along Church Gate, whence proceeding between some handsome old sixteenth century houses, with overhanging fronts, one steps into a street or lane that wears a most charming air of antiquity. At the bottom is the old Free school, founded by Robert Dewhurst in 1640, the building forming an interesting example of the domestic Tudor-Jacobean transition style.