All the bells in Hertfordshire were ringing for Elizabeth, pounding the peal into her head ... Elizabeth threw open the shutters of Hatfield Palace, flung open the window, wanting to be drowned in the noise, deafened by her own triumph ... Elizabeth laughed out loud at the racket which hammered out the news: poor sick Queen Mary was dead at last, and Princess Elizabeth was the uncontested heir. “Thank God,” she shouted up at the whirling clouds.

Cecil was a great one for lists; their march down the page matched the orderly progression of his thinking.

William Hyde summoned his sister to his office, the room where he transacted the business of his estate ... He was seated behind the great table, which was circular and sectioned with drawers, each bearing a letter of the alphabet. The table could turn on its axis toward the landlord and each drawer had the contracts and rent books of the tenant farmers, filed under the initial letter of their name. Lizzie remarked idly that the drawer marked Z had never been used, and wondered that no one thought to make a table which was missing the X and the Z, since these must be uncommon initial letters in English.