William Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

“ He had faithfully served William Cecil, the great Lord Burleigh, [2] and was destined, in the matter of the Powder Plot, to serve with equal fidelity his son, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. Sir William Waad, under Elizabeth, had been Secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards Clerk of the Privy Council. He had been sent on frequent diplomatic missions to Madrid, Paris, and the Low Countries. In 1588 he was elected a member of Parliament, and in 1601 represented Preston, where his Protestant zeal made him very unpopular among the Roman Catholics of Lancashire. ”

“ And prove my equal fame in poesy and law!
[1] Rapin observes, that Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, was of a great genius; and though crooked before and behind, Nature supplied that defect with noble endowments of mind. ”

“ But if paid agencies are not permitted, a very serious suspicion fastens on that hard-mouthed, rising lordling, Robert Cecil, son of the Marquis of Salisbury, and one of the most active and energetic champions of the slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but portionless daughter of an English judge ”

“ Such was the nature of these secret communications, Which, while they aimed at securing for Cecil a fresh lease of power in the new reign, conferred undoubted advantages on the country. Owing to Cecil’s action, on the death of Elizabeth on the 24th of March 1603, James was proclaimed king, and took possession of the throne without opposition. Cecil was continued in his office, was created Baron Cecil of Essendon in Rutlandshire on the 13th of May, Viscount Cranborne on the 20th of August 1604, and earl of Salisbury on the 4th of May 1605. ”

“ The policy of the "Great Contract" had certainly broken down, and the King, under Cecil's guidance, had certainly not known how to manage an English parliament. In writing to the King he found it hard to satisfy himself. Several draft letters remain, and it is not certain which of them, if any, was sent. But immediately on Salisbury's death he began, May 29th, a letter in which he said that he had never yet been able to show his affection to the King, "having been as a hawk tied to another's fist;" ”

“ Elizabeth's chief adviser, from the very moment of her accession—and, indeed, even before it—was the celebrated Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, the direct ancestor of the present Marquesses of Exeter and Salisbury. Cecil was a man of the most consummate ability and prudence. He was a man much under the influence of religion, yet totally free from fanaticism—a combination very rarely found in the sixteenth century, and not very common at any time. Like Elizabeth herself, he had outwardly conformed in Mary's days ”

“ In 1600 Cecil was a member of a Commission appointed to report on Essex's return from Ireland without permission, and managed to mitigate the gravity of his offence; but in 1601, on Essex's trial for treason, had to defend himself from an accusation by Essex of having declared himself in favour of the Infanta's claim to the throne. By careful preparations he secured the peaceable accession of James ii. to the throne, and was raised to the peerage, and eventually made Earl of Salisbury in consequence. For the rest of his life he remained James's most trusted minister. ”

“ Some of the leading nobles, the Earl of Westmorland, Lord Peterborough, Lord Newport, and the Earl of Salisbury, were condemned, the last-named on account of an estate which had been presented to his father, Robert Cecil, by Queen Elizabeth [48] . And these claims were constantly being stretched further: it appeared as if the greater part of England would soon be considered as having been forest-land in former days. Even the government [Pg 35] A.D. 1634. now felt itself in a critical position from the agitation kindled by this conduct, and suspended proceedings for a moment [49] . ”

“ On November 7th, very soon after the discovery of the conspiracy, whose threads it became the immediate duty of the council to unravel, that body appears to have sent for Ben Jonson, at the advice no doubt of Salisbury, who (as has just been seen) knew of Jonson; indeed, the latter has been supposed to have given his support as a dramatist to the party headed by Robert Cecil before Queen Elizabeth's death. ”

“ The Lord Treasurer was a great benefactor to Stamford, of which he was made lord of the manor by his royal mistress. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to state that both branches of the Cecil family, now represented by the Marquises of Exeter and Salisbury, trace their descent from the Elizabethan statesman.
In 1565 William Cecil employed John Thorpe to design “Burghley House by Stamford town,” which remains one of the stateliest of England’s stately homes. ”

“ Whether the argument of the judges was right or wrong, they were the constitutional exponents of the law, and when Cecil (who had been James's chief minister from the beginning of the reign, and was created Earl of Salisbury in 1605) was made Lord Treasurer as well as Secretary in 1608, he at once levied new impositions to the amount of about 70,000l. a year, on the plea that more money was needed in consequence of the troubles in Ireland. ”

“ Salisbury was a very able man, to whom 309 perhaps his contemporaries did some injustice. The ministers of weak and wilful monarchs are made answerable for the mischiefs they are compelled to suffer, and gain no credit for those which they prevent. Cecil had made personal enemies of those who had loved Essex or admired Raleigh, as well as those who looked invidiously on his elevation. It was believed that the desire shown by the House of Commons to abolish the feudal wardships, proceeded in a great measure from the circumstance that this obnoxious minister was master of the court of wards ”

“ That cautious and able minister was too fond of power himself to allow it to pass into the hands of much weaker men. James, while Cecil lived, had indeed no lack of favourites on whom he lavished affluence and honours; but his cunning minister had the address to prevent him from giving them places of real power and responsibility. James therefore, so long as Cecil remained, was content to make his favourites his companions and left Cecil to conduct public affairs; but no sooner was Salisbury in his grave, than James became the slave of his favourites, who ruled both him and the kingdom. ”

“ The only endowment of Christ's Church comes from the Father and the Son, and is the Holy Ghost, Which no man can give and no man can take away.'"
Here, if you like, is the authentic voice of Life and Liberty.
V LOVE AND PUNISHMENT
Lord Hugh Cecil is, I think, one of the most interesting figures in the public life of the time. Ten years ago I regarded him as the future leader of the Tory party and a predestined Prime Minister. Of late years he has seemed to turn away from Page 201 the strifes and intrigues of ordinary politics, and to have resigned official ambition to his elder brother ”

“ The Bishop’s comment upon this is, that “Cecil’s disgrace must have great effect, as he has many companions in discontent, especially the Duke of Norfolk.... Their quarrels cannot injure public business, as nobody worse than Cecil can be at the head of affairs, but the outcome of it all might be the imprisonment of the Queen, and the proclamation of the Earl of Huntingdon [131] as King. He is a great heretic, and the French forces might be used for him. Cecil says he is the real heir of England, and all the heretics want him. I do not like Cecil’s great friendship with the Bishop of Valence.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Lord Robert Cecil great height, slimness, and the scholar’s stoop made rather jarringly noticeable that untidiness which is an abiding Cecilian characteristic; in Lord Salisbury the rounded shoulders rather added to his impressiveness, as suggesting Atlas loads of responsibility, while the very massiveness of the figure cancelled the effect of imperfect valeting. No worse dressed or more majestic figure was ever seen in the House of Lords, which has never been wanting either in shabbiness or in distinction. ”

“ By the first marriage David Cecil left at his death in 1536 a son and heir, Richard Cecil, who enjoyed a place at court as yeoman of the king’s wardrobe under Henry VIII. and Edward VI. A gentleman of the privy chamber and sometime sheriff of Rutland, Richard Cecil had his share at the distribution of abbey lands, St Michael’s priory in Stamford being among the grants made to him. William Cecil, only son of Richard, was born, by his own account, in 1520, at Bourne in Lincolnshire. ”

“ Cecil, the father, had founded the barony of Burleigh, which subsequently was raised into the earldom of Exeter. Sir Robert Cecil, the son, whose personal merits towards James I. were more conspicuous than those of his father towards Queen Elizabeth, had leaped at once into the earldom of Salisbury. Through two centuries these distinguished houses—Exeter the elder and Salisbury the junior—had run against each other. At length the junior house ran ahead of its elder, being raised to a marquisate. But in this century the elder righted itself, rising also to a marquisate. ”

“ The dark ability of this man supplied the lack of talent in his patron, and became a mine of wealth to Overbury himself. Even Cecil and the earl of Suffolk strove to avail themselves of his services; and when Cecil quitted the scene, Carr, through Overbury's management, carried all before him. In March, 1611, he was created viscount Rochester, in April, 1612, he became a member of the privy council, and was invested with the order of the garter. ”

“ He had a high idea of what was expected from the prime minister of the queen of England. All this splendour and profuseness could not be kept up through life and any large accumulation of wealth be left behind him. In truth Cecil did not die as rich a man as might have been expected, and there is good reason for believing that if his father had not left him an ample patrimony he would have died as poor a man as many another of Elizabeth's ablest and most faithful servants. ”

“ Cecil assured him there was no danger; the duke, therefore, proceeded to London, and was instantly arrested and committed to the Tower in October, 1569.
At the same time Elizabeth joined the Earl of [281] Huntingdon, an avowed enemy of the Queen of Scots, in commission with her keeper, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Viscount Hertford, to secure more completely the person of Mary, who was again removed to Tutbury, and to examine her papers for further proofs of the correspondence with Norfolk. Her confidential servants had been dismissed; her person surrounded by an armed force ”

“ Are all the generous efforts of our ancestors, are all those glorious contentions, by which they meant to secure to themselves, and to transmit to their posterity, a known law, a certain rule of living, reduced to this conclusion, that instead of the arbitrary power of a King, we must submit to the arbitrary power of a House of Commons? ”

“ Sir William Cecil, the soul of caution itself, having in vain tried to get into the service of Queen Mary, studied to avoid the observation of her ministers, and is said to have laid down a plan for the conduct of the Princess Elizabeth during this hazardous period, which she afterwards repaid by high honours and deep confidence. But the treatment of one illustrious man at this period excited great indignation amongst the liberal party. ”

“ It is not desirable that a narrow, selfish, envious Cecil, who could never forgive his noblest contemporaries for failing to be hunchbacks like himself, should steer England all his life as it were with supreme hand, and himself sail on the topmost tide of fortune ”

“ God will be on our side, and reveal the truth to our most gracious Sovereign.’
Elizabeth died. James succeeded, and Cecil spoke to him in behalf of his cousin, then a kind of honoured prisoner at Wrest House, the seat of the Earl of Kent, who had married a Talbot. Cecil besought and advised the King to deal gently with her, and she was set at liberty, but went by her friend’s advice to dwell at Sheen, with my Lady Northampton, whence she wrote many letters petitioning for some allowance suitable to her birth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without connections, without any natural interest in the soil, the importers of foreign gold have forced their way into Parliament by such a torrent of private corruption, as no private hereditary fortune could resist. My Lords, not saying but what is within the knowledge of us all, the corruption of the people is the great original cause of the discontents of the people themselves, of the enterprise of the Crown, and the notorious decay of the internal vigor of the Constitution. ”