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. [Illustration: The Salisbury Statue, Hatfield] 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. [Illustration: Cecil Rhodes’s Birth-place, Bishop’s Stortford] 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. [Illustration: Ruins of Verulam House, the Residence of Francis, Viscount St Albans] [Illustration: Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans]