William Cecil, 1st Viscount Burleigh

“ 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. ”

“ He was Constable of Warwick Castle, Bailiff of Wittlesea Mere, and Keeper of the Swans, like his father, and Sheriff of Rutland; and to add to his prosperity, he married the heiress of William Heckington of Bourne, who brought to him the fine property of Burghley adjoining his own estates at Stamford. When, therefore, William Cecil was born in the house of his maternal grandfather at Bourne, he was prospective heir to broad acres in a half-dozen counties, with almost the certainty of advancement through court influence in whatever career he might choose. ”

“ It was erected in the course of the first decade of the seventeenth century, by William Cecil, son of Lord Burleigh, the great founder of his race's honors, Elizabeth's minister. There is a story that the Cecil who built the house was himself the surveyor and architect, but I do not find it substantiated in an account of the place given in one of Mr. Murray's excellent publications. If it is true, one cannot but admire so elaborate and definite a vision of the desirable home on the part of a distinguished amateur. ”

“ Lord Burleigh married twice, each time gaining a large increase both to his fortunes and to his social and political influence. [1133] His first wife, to whom he was married in 1541, was Mary, sister of Sir John Cheke, who, within a year of their marriage, died, after giving birth to his son and successor, Thomas Cecil. In 1545 he married, secondly, Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, by whom he had, with numerous other issue, a son, Robert Cecil, who was created Earl of Salisbury, and was the progenitor of the present Marquis of Salisbury. ”

“ In Elizabeth’s reign began the rise of the Cecil family, whose fortunes have since been so closely bound up with Stamford.
Richard Cecil, the father of the great Lord Treasurer, obtained possession of the manor of Burghley in 1528, and, after adding considerably to the estates, died in 1552, and was buried in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. His more famous son William, afterwards first Lord Burghley, was born at Bourne, and received part of his education at Stamford Grammar School, proceeding thence to St. John’s College, Cambridge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Around her Council-board she gathered the wisest and strongest men to be found in the realm. The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh) , a man of great sagacity and ceaseless industry, to whose able counsel and prudent management is largely due the success of Elizabeth's reign. He stood at the head of the Queen's Council for forty years. His son Robert, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Sir Francis Walsingham were also prominent among the queen's advisers. ”

“ For example, in “The Antiquary” he makes the sun set in the German Ocean; in the “Legend of Montrose” he uses in one place westward where it should be eastward; in “Kenilworth” the text has “In the employment both of Burleigh and Cecil,” but Burleigh and Cecil are one and the same [125] person, and it should probably read Walsingham and Cecil ”

“ Letter to a friend, in Strype iii. 2, 379. Certain true general notes upon the actions of Lord Burleigh, in Strype iii. 2, 505. A letter from Leicester is in existence, in which he tries to prove that William Cecil had obligations to his father and not merely to the Protector.
[281] Naunton, Fragmenta regalia.
[282] Sir H. Nicolas, Life and Times of Christopher Hatton, communicates (p. 30) fragments of the Queen's letters, which lead him to remark that the supposition of an immoral relation (which he elsewhere adopts) is refuted by them. The Queen inquires for instance, What is friendship? ”

“ CECIL, THOMAS, first Earl of Exeter, second Lord Burghley (1542–1622) , eldest son of William Cecil, lord Burghley, by Mary Cheke [see Cecil, William] , was born on 5 May 1542. He seems to have been brought up under tutors at his father's house, and never to have received a university education; he gave no signs of more than average ability, and it was probably because his father knew him to be deficient in capacity that he felt compelled to keep him in the background during his own lifetime. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The thing is very possible. Burleigh was his life-long enemy. He hated him as the commonplace soul instinctively hates the man of genius, and this hatred was aggravated by his being patronised by Leicester, Essex, and Raleigh, all men who were detested by him. Nothing was, therefore, easier than for Burleigh to withhold the dying poet's pension, or his son Robert Cecil, who now possessed his power, for Burleigh was in his last days, and Cecil inherited all his meanness. Spenser has recorded the malice of Burleigh in various places. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A large mural monument close by recalls a happy marriage and records the grief of the heart-broken husband. Elizabeth's trusted Minister, the great Lord Burleigh, is here depicted in his robes of state, kneeling above the recumbent effigies of his wife, a lady noted for her learning and for her active benevolence, and of their unhappy daughter, Anne, Countess of Oxford. At his mother's feet is the figure of Robert Cecil, the first Lord Salisbury of that name, who succeeded his father as confidential adviser to their sovereign. Neither father nor son is buried here. ”

“ 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;" ”

“ Cecil Burleigh also sat at an open window, but he was not provided with a confessor, only with a cigar. He had dined, and did not feel so intensely miserable as he felt an hour ago. "Dear little Julia!" He thought of her with caressing tenderness, her pretty looks, her graceful ways, her sweet affection. "There were tears in her dove's eyes when she said 'Good-bye, Cecil, good-bye, dear!'" No other woman would ever have his heart. ”

“ The calm prudence which had enabled Burleigh to shape his course through so many dangers, and the vast experience which he had acquired in dealing with two generations of colleagues and rivals, seemed scarcely sufficient to support him in this new competition; and Robert Cecil sickened with fear and envy as he contemplated the rising fame and influence of Essex.
The history of the factions which, towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, divided her court and her council, though pregnant with instruction, is by no means interesting or pleasing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the return of Cecil he submitted to the queen the proposals which Philip had made for the extension of the peace to England, and Burleigh and Sir Robert contended that Spain having made peace with France, it was wise for this kingdom to do the same. Essex, on the contrary, contended for war, and for still punishing the Spaniards for their attempt at invasion. In the midst of one of the debates in the Council, Burleigh put his pocket Bible gently before him, open at these words in the Psalms:—"Blood-thirsty men shall not live out half their days." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name of Burleigh sounds high as that of Elizabeth, for their glory was equal—but the name alone attaches to the present character; for the great Cecil, by the wisdom of whose measures England was, at the period of this play, in its highest prosperity, died about two years previous to the death of Essex; and this, his son, became the unhappy earl's bitterest foe.
Not even a female character is here introduced from fiction.—Rutland and Nottingham are both well known in history; and though the cruel incident of the ring is not attested by any historian, it is minutely related by them all. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This was the condition of English politics at home and abroad when William Cecil first saw the light at Bourne, in Lincolnshire, on the 13th September 1520. He came into the world at the opening of a new epoch both for his country and for the general advancement of civilisation, and before he left it the modern dispensation was firmly planted, in England at least, owing in no small measure to his sagacity and statecraft. ”