William Cecil, 1st Earl of Burghley

“ Created earl of Exeter by James I., the second Lord Burghley was more soldier than statesman, and from his death to the present day the elder line of the Cecils has taken small part in public affairs. William Cecil, 2nd earl of Exeter, took as his first wife the Lady Roos, daughter and heir of the 3rd earl of Rutland of the Manners family. ”

“ At an early age he seems to have been received into the household of Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, and ultimately became one of Cecil's two chief secretaries. The position gave him much influence at Elizabeth's court, and being ‘very witty and jocose’ he was popular in society. ”

“ He was mixed up in the troubles of the time, and was, says Macaulay, 'foolish to a proverb,' and the 'prey of gamesters.' John Cecil, Earl of Exeter, from 1678 to 1700, who was descended from Lord Burghley's elder son, was himself a book collector, and therefore not likely to part with the library of his illustrious ancestor. ”

“ The Earl of Huntingdon wrote to Sir William Cecil, then the Queen's Secretary of State (afterwards Lord Burghley, her Treasurer) , a letter, communicating suspicions of the Earl of Derby, which the writer asked should be burned as soon as read, but which has been preserved (and printed) amongst Lord Burghley's State Papers (I. 603.) Modernising the spelling, the letter runs thus:—
Sir,—I am bolder to write to you on weighty matters, than I dare be to some others ”

“ Cecil did not become the Lord of Burghley until the death of his uncle, the 9th Earl of Exeter, two years after this marriage, up to which time he resided at Bolas, Salop, the residence of his wife before her marriage, and there the two eldest of their four children were born. The Countess of Exeter died greatly beloved and respected at the early age of twenty-four, having been married nearly seven years. ”

“ Lord Burghley > (William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 1520-98: the most powerful man in England. An enemy of the Earl of Leicester, who was the uncle of Sir Philip Sidney (one of Spenser's friends) . This, taken in combination with Spenser's friendship with Raleigh (another enemy) perhaps disinclined Burghley to favour the poet or his work)
413 Treasurer of England_ 414 415 To, you right noble lord, whose careful breast
careful > {Full of cares; prudent} breast > heart ”

“ Beresford, Henry, 282 et sqq., 289, 290 Beton, Andrew, 232 Beton, Archbishop, 232 Beton, John, 81, 232 Beauchamp, Lord, 340 366Bolsover, 35, 43, 204, 347, 351 et sqq. Bolton, Castle, Mary Queen of Scots at, 47, 49 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 35 Bothwell, Earl of, 68–9, 119, 127 Boughton, Elizabeth. See Cavendish Brackenbury, Richard, 327 Bruce, Mrs., 66 Burghley, Lady, 32, 101, 105, 128, 316 Burghley, Robert Cecil, Lord, 340–1 Burghley, Thomas Cecil, Lord, 188 Burghley, William Cecil, Lord, 23, 32, 38, 69, 79, 101, 104–5, 178, 183, 211, 257, 259, 302, 314, 316, 325 ”

“ Being of a weakly constitution and a delicate physique, he was educated at home under private tutors. It is probable that Dr. Richard Neile, eventually archbishop of York, was one of them; it is certain he was one of Lord Burghley's chaplains and received his preferments through the aid afforded him by father and son. When it is said, as it often has been said, that Robert, earl of Essex, was his ‘early playmate,’ it is forgotten that Essex was his junior by at least four years, and was actually a member of Lord Burghley's household only for a few weeks. It is said that Cecil entered at St. ”

“ His uncle by marriage was that William Cecil who was to be Lord Burghley. His mother, the sister of Lady Cecil, was one of the daughters of Sir Antony Cook, a person deep in the confidence of the reforming party, who had been tutor of Edward VI. She was a remarkable woman, highly accomplished after the fashion of the ladies of her party, and as would become her father's daughter and the austere and laborious family to which she belonged. She was "exquisitely skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues;" ”

“ When he arrived [264] in Flanders he made a long report of his embassy, containing the following interesting appreciation of Burghley as he appeared to his greatest enemy: “The principal person in the Council is William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, a Knight of the Garter. He is a man of mean sort, but very astute, false, lying, and full of artifice. He is a great heretic, and such a clownish Englishman as to believe that all the Christian princes joined together are not able to injure the sovereign of his country, and he therefore treats their ministers with great arrogance. ”

“ If it be a fair specimen of his style of composition, he must indeed have been a man of but small ‘parts.’ Next year, on the occasion of the French ambassador visiting Cambridge, accompanied by Lord Burghley as chancellor of the university, and other notables, Cecil was admitted M.A. by a special grace of the senate. At a magnificent tournament held at Westminster during this year he took a prominent part, and received a prize at the hands of the queen for his prowess at the barriers. He had always had a desire for a military life, which his father would never allow him to gratify ”

“ The embarrassment of riches in the way of material is, indeed, the rock upon which most of the serious biographers of Cecil have foundered. In the Lansdowne MSS., at the British Museum alone, there are 122 folio volumes of Burghley manuscripts, which descended through the minister’s secretary, Sir Michael Hicks, besides large numbers in the Cotton and Harley collections. ”

“ Strype’s best documentary information is from the papers of Queen Elizabeth’s great minister, Sir William Cecil, known as Mr Secretary Cecil, after 1570 as Lord Burghley, and after 1572 as the Lord High Treasurer of England.
In 1562 the Queen was prevailed upon to send succour to the French Protestants. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton had interviews in France with Theodore Beza, and conveyed to Cecil a letter from that famous divine, dated at Caen, 16 March 1562, (signed) T. de Belze. This letter is printed in Strype’s “Annals of Queen Elizabeth,” Second Appendix, B., vol. i. ”

“ Cecil would certainly bear no other man’s burden if he could help it.
Through all this critical time Sir William was indefatigable. His wife lived usually retired from the court, at their home at Wimbledon; but Cecil’s town house at Cannon Row, Westminster, was the scene of ceaseless business, for Petre, the joint-Secretary, was ill disposed, and did little. The Duchess of Suffolk, Lord Clinton, and all the Lincolnshire folk used Cecil unsparingly in [32] all their suits and troubles, and they had many. ”

“ Theobalds Entertainment of 1594 (William Lord Burghley) .
The Hermit was brought into play again when Elizabeth next visited Theobalds, in 1594 (13–23 June) . He delivered an Oration, in which he recalled the recovery of his cell at her last coming, and expressed a fear that ‘my young master’ might wish to use it. No doubt the alternative was that Robert Cecil should become Secretary. The oration, ‘penned by Sir Robert Cecill’, is printed by Nichols, Eliz. iii. 241, from Bodl. Rawlinson MS. D 692 (Bodl. 13464) , f. 106.
iv. Wimbledon Entertainment of 1599 (Thomas Lord Burghley) . ”

“ It was decided that a progress should be undertaken for her health, in which the University of Oxford could be visited, and Cecil be specially honoured by a stay of the Queen at his house of Burghley. She left London in July, and underwent an ordeal at Oxford similar to that which she had experienced two years before at Cambridge. The vestments controversy was raging with great bitterness, clergymen were deprived and punished for contumacy, pulpit and press were silenced, and the Protestants resentful. ”

“ For eighteen months (1587-8) he acted as Latin secretary to Cardinal Allen, and afterwards spent two years in Spain, and was with Father Parsons at his newly erected seminary at Valladolid. Early in 1591 Parsons sent Cecil, with another priest, Fixer, alias Wilson, into England, via Amsterdam; but the vessel in which they sailed was captured by her Majesty's ship Hope in the Channel, and the two priests were carried to London. Here they at once came to terms with Lord Burghley. Cecil had already in 1588 corresponded, under the name of Juan de Campo, with Sir Francis Walsingham. ”

“ On the 1st March, Randolph sent to Cecil copies of the two “Conventions,” signed by the Earls—namely, that of Darnley, Morton, and Ruthven, to kill Rizzio; and that of Murray, Argyll, Rothes, &c., to uphold Darnley in all his quarrels. Bedford, writing to Cecil on the 6th March, begged him earnestly to keep the whole matter secret, except from Leicester and the Queen. It will thus be seen that, far from being a promoter of the Darnley plot to kill Rizzio, Cecil did not know of it in time to stop its perpetration, if he had been inclined to do so, as the murder was committed on the 9th March. ”

“ If he was austere in a frivolous court, if bribes failed to buy him in an age of universal corruption, if he was cool and judicious amidst general vehemence, it was because the qualities of his mind and his strict self-schooling enabled him to understand that his country might thus be most effectively served, and that it would be unworthy of William Cecil to act otherwise. ”

“ For his own part his desire had always been to see the Queen married to a prince of the House of Austria, with which it was well to be in alliance; but since old friends cast them off, and your Majesty refused to confirm the treaties, or receive a minister at your court, [418] they must seek new friends.”
The current of affairs and the Queen’s fickleness evidently displeased the Lord Treasurer. In September (1578) he had unsuccessfully begged leave of absence to visit Burghley, [419] where the rebuilding of the mansion was still progressing, under the care of Sir Thomas Cecil. ”

“ That the reconciliation was not easy will be seen in Essex’s letters in the Bacon Papers. The Earl writes in September to Lady Russell, “Yesterday the Lord Treasurer and Sir Robert Cecil did, before the Queen, contest with me, ... and this day I was more braved by your little cousin (Cecil) than ever I was by any man in my life. But I was, and am, not angry, which is all the advantage I have of him.” In the following April Essex entertained Cecil and Ralegh at dinner, “and a treaty of peace was confirmed.” ”

“ Cecil was simple and sober in his own living and attire, but by his every act he demonstrates his ambition to be well regarded by the world, and his determination to fulfil what he considered decorous in a great personage who owed a duty to his ancestry, to his position, and to those who should inherit his honours. His letter of advice to the Earl of Bedford when the latter was appointed governor of Berwick (1564) sets forth in a few words his ideal of a grand seigneur, which might represent a portrait of himself. “Think of some great nobleman whom you can take as your pattern.... ”

“ Elizabeth had, she averred, promised to sustain Murray, to recognise his legitimacy, and raise him to the throne as her vassal; both of these being accusations which were likely to move the Hamiltons to fury. But, above all, she accused Cecil of a deeper plot still. He had arranged, she said, to marry one of his daughters to the Earl of Hertford, father of Catharine Grey’s young heir, and thus, by mutual support, Hertford’s son and Murray might occupy respectively the English and Scottish thrones under Cecil’s tutelage. ”

“ This throughout his life was the function of William Cecil. His gifts were not of the highest, for he was not a constructive statesman or a pioneer of great causes. He often stood by and saw injustice done by extreme men on one or the other side rather than lose his influence by appearing to favour the opposite extreme; and, as we have seen in his own words, he was quite ready to carry out as a minister a policy of which as a Councillor he had expressed his disapproval. ”

“ John Cecil, fifth earl of Exeter. He was a non-juror, and lived in retirement at his noble seat of Burleigh. Prior was early patronised by his lordship; and dates from his mansion the lively epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd. Mr Malone supposes Prior may have assisted in composing his epitaph, where his character is thus elegantly drawn: Johannes Cecil, Baro de Burghley, Exoniæ comes, magni Burleii abnepos haudquaquam degener. Egregiam enim indolem optimis moribus optimis artibus excoluit. Humanioribus literis bene instructus, peregre, plus vice simplici, profectus est. ”

“ Essex, it was thought, would now hold sway and launch England upon a policy of warlike adventure. But Essex was himself hurrying to his doom; and Robert Cecil held firmly in his hand the strings of his great father’s [497] policy—a policy which was on the death of the Queen to bring a Scottish king to the English throne, and unite England and Spain again in a friendly alliance. The baseness and trickery that accompanied the reunion of the countries belong to the history of the reign of James, and formed no part of the plan of Lord Burghley or his mistress. ”

“ To a short life of turbulent pleasure succeeded twenty years of plotting against the peace and independence of England and the cause of religious liberty. During that twenty years Cecil and his mistress were pitted against one of the cleverest women in Europe, supported by all that was discontented in England and Scotland, and all that was distinctively Catholic abroad. In the critical position caused by the rising of the Protestant Lords against Bothwell and the Queen, Cecil’s view diverged somewhat from that of Elizabeth. ”