Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury his nephew, Arthur Balfour. King Edward VII conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO), with the order star set in brilliants, during his resignation audience. Salisbury, due to breathing difficulties caused by his great weight, took to sleeping in a chair at Hatfield House. His death in August 1903 followed a fall from that chair, when by then he had a weak heart condition and blood poisoning caused by an ulcerated leg. Salisbury was buried at St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield, where his predecessor as prime minister, Lord Melbourne, is also interred. When Salisbury died his
The Prime Minister Was a Spy officials". "The Prime Minister Was a Spy" made the following claims: Tom Frame, Holt's biographer, describes Titcombe and Grey's account as a "complete fabrication". He notes that there is "no corroborative evidence" for most of their claims, as none of the documents referred to in the book were produced. Furthermore, Holt was stridently anti-Communist, the large sums of money he supposedly received were never reflected in his lifestyle, he was highly unlikely to have deserted his wife and children, and the water off of Cheviot Beach was much too shallow for a submarine to submerge. Zara Holt observed that her