:''Lord Burghley redirects here. For other holders of the title, see
Baron Burghley''
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
'William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley' (
13 September 1520 –
4 August 1598), was an
English politician, the chief advisor of
Queen Elizabeth I for most of her
reign (
17 November 1558–
24 March 1603), and
Lord High Treasurer from
1572.
Early life
Cecil was born in
Bourne, Lincolnshire in 1520, the son of
Richard Cecil, owner of the
Burghley estate (near
Stamford, Lincolnshire), and his wife, Jane Heckington.
Pedigrees, elaborated by Cecil himself with the help of
William Camden, the
antiquary, associated him with the Cecils or Sitsyllts of Altyrennes in
Herefordshire, and traced his descent from an Owen of the time of
King Harold and a Sitsyllt of the reign of
William Rufus. The connection with the Herefordshire family is not so impossible as the descent from Sitsyllt; but the earliest known authentic ancestor of the Lord Treasurer is his grandfather, David, who, according to Burghley's enemies, kept the best
inn in Stamford. David somehow secured the favour of
Henry VII, to whom he seems to have been
Yeoman of the Guard. He was
Sergeant-of-Arms to
Henry VIII in 1526,
Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1532, and a
Justice of the Peace for
Rutland. His eldest son, Richard,
Yeoman of the Wardrobe (d. 1554), married Jane, daughter of William Heckington of Bourne, and was father of three daughters and the future Lord Burghley.
William, the only son, was put to school first at
The King's School, Grantham and then at
Stamford School, which he later saved and endowed. In May 1535, at the age of fourteen, he went up to
St John's College, Cambridge, where he was brought into contact with the foremost
educationalists of the time,
Roger Ascham and
John Cheke, and acquired an unusual knowledge of
Greek. He also acquired the affections of Cheke's sister, Mary, and was in 1541 removed by his father to
Gray's Inn, without, after six years' residence at Cambridge, having taken a
degree. The precaution proved useless and four months later Cecil committed one of the rare rash acts of his life in marrying Mary Cheke. The only child of this marriage,
Thomas, the future earl of
Exeter, was born in May 1542, and in February 1543 Cecil's first wife died. Three years later he married (
December 21 1546) Mildred, daughter of Sir
Anthony Cooke, who was ranked by Ascham with
Lady Jane Grey as one of the two most learned ladies in the kingdom, and whose sister, Anne, became the wife of Sir
Nicholas (and the mother of
Sir Francis) Bacon.
Early career
William Cecil's early career was spent in the service of the
Duke of Somerset (a brother of the late queen,
Jane Seymour, who was
Lord Protector during the early years of the reign of his nephew, the young
Edward VI). Cecil accompanied Somerset on his
Pinkie campaign of 1547 (part of
the "Rough Wooing"), being one of the two Judges of
the Marshalsea, i.e. in the
courts-martial. The other was William Patten, who states that both he and Cecil began to write independent accounts of the campaign, and that Cecil generously communicated his notes for Patten's narrative.
Cecil, according to his
autobiographical notes, sat in
Parliament in 1543; but his name does not occur in the imperfect parliamentary returns until
1547, when he was elected for the family
borough of Stamford.
In
1548, he is described as the Protector's Master of Requests, which apparently means that he was clerk or
registrar of the court of requests which the Protector, possibly at
Hugh Latimer's instigation, illegally set up in
Somerset House to hear poor men's complaints. He also seems to have acted as private secretary to the Protector, and was in some danger at the time of the Protector's fall in October
1549. The lords opposed to Somerset ordered his detention on
10 October, and in November he was in the
Tower.
Cecil ingratiated himself with
Warwick, and on
15 September 1550 he was sworn in as one of King Edward's two
secretaries. He was
knighted on
11 October 1551, on the eve of Somerset's second fall, and was congratulated on his success in escaping his
benefactor's fate.
In April 1551, Cecil became
Chancellor of the
Order of the Garter. But service under Warwick (by now the Duke of Northumberland) was no bed of roses, and in his diary Cecil recorded his release in the phrase ''ex misero aulico factus liber et mei juris''. His responsibility for Edward's illegal devises of the crown (a document which barred both Elizabeth and Mary, the remaining children of
Henry VIII, from the throne, in favour of
Lady Jane Grey) has been studiously minimised by Cecil himself and by his
biographers. Years afterwards, he pretended that he had only signed the devise as a witness, but in his apology to
Queen Mary I, he did not venture to allege so flimsy an excuse; he preferred to lay stress on the extent to which he succeeded in shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of his brother-in-law, Sir John Cheke, and other friends, and on his intrigues to frustrate the Queen to whom he had sworn allegiance.
There is no doubt that Cecil saw which way the wind was blowing, and disliked Northumberland's scheme; but he had not the courage to resist the duke to his face. As soon, however, as the duke had set out to meet Mary, Cecil became the most active intriguer against him, and to these efforts, of which he laid a full account before Queen Mary, he mainly owed his immunity. He had, moreover, had no part in the divorce of
Catherine of Aragon or in the humiliation of Mary in Henry's reign, and he made no scruple about conforming to the religious reaction. He went to
Mass,
confessed, and out of sheer zeal and in no official capacity went to meet
Cardinal Pole on his pious mission to England in December
1554, again accompanying him to
Calais in May
1555.
It was rumoured in December 1554 that Cecil would succeed
Sir William Petre as
Secretary of State, an office which, with his chancellorship of the Garter, he had lost on Mary's
accession to the throne. Probably the Queen had more to do with the falsification of this rumour than Cecil, though he is said to have opposed, in the parliament of 1555 (in which he represented
Lincolnshire), a bill for the
confiscation of the estates of the
Protestant refugees. But the story, even as told by his biographer (
Peck, ''Desiderata Curiosa'',
1732–
1735, i. 11), does not represent Cecil's conduct as having been very courageous; and it is more to his credit that he found no seat in the parliament of
1558, for which Mary had directed the return of "discreet and good
Catholic members".
Reign of Elizabeth
By that time Cecil had begun to trim his sails to a different breeze. He was in secret communication with the future
Elizabeth I before Mary died, and from the first the new Queen relied on Cecil as she relied on no one else. Her confidence was not misplaced; Cecil was exactly the kind of
minister England then required.
Personal experience had ripened his rare natural gift for avoiding dangers. It was no time for brilliant initiative or adventurous politics; the need was to avoid
Scylla and Charybdis, and a ''via media'' (middle way) had to be found in Church and State, at home and abroad. Cecil was not a political genius; no great ideas emanated from his brain. But he was eminently a safe man, not an original thinker, but a counsellor of unrivalled wisdom. Caution was his supreme characteristic; he saw that above all things England required time. He restored the fortunes of his country by deliberation. He averted open rupture until England was strong enough to stand the shock.
Cecil was not a religious zealot; he aided the
Huguenots and the
Dutch just enough to keep them going in the struggles which warded danger off from England's shores. But Cecil never developed that passionate aversion from decided measures which became a second nature to his mistress. His intervention in Scotland in 1559–1560 showed that he could strike on occasion; and his action over the execution of
Mary, Queen of Scots, proved that he was willing to take responsibility from which Elizabeth shrank.
Generally he was in favour of more decided intervention on behalf of continental Protestants than Elizabeth would admit, but it is not always easy to ascertain the advice he gave. He has left endless
memoranda lucidly setting forth the pros and cons of every course of action; but there are few indications of the line which he actually recommended when it came to a decision. How far he was personally responsible for the
Anglican Settlement, the
Poor Laws, and the
foreign policy of the reign, how far he was thwarted by the baleful influence of
Leicester and the
caprices of the Queen, remains to a large extent a matter of conjecture.
His share in the
religious Settlement of 1559 was considerable, and it coincided fairly with his own somewhat indeterminate religious views. Like the mass of the nation, he grew more Protestant as time wore on; he was readier to persecute
Papists than
Puritans; he had no love for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and he warmly remonstrated with
John Whitgift over his persecuting Articles of
1583. The finest
encomium was passed on him by the queen herself, when she said, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the state."
From 1558 for forty years, the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England. When she came to the throne in
1558, she appointed him
Secretary of State. Of personal incident, apart from his mission to Scotland in 1560, there is little. He represented Lincolnshire in the Parliament of 1559, and
Northamptonshire in that of 1563, and he took an active part in the proceedings of the
House of Commons until his elevation to the
peerage; but there seems no good evidence for the story that he was proposed as
Speaker in 1563. In January 1561, he was given the lucrative office of Master of the Court of Wards in succession to Sir Thomas Parry, and he did something to reform that instrument of tyranny and abuse. In February 1559, he was elected
Chancellor of Cambridge University in succession to Cardinal Pole; he was created
M.A. of that university on the occasion of Elizabeth's visit in 1564, and M.A. of Oxford on a similar occasion in 1566.
He was the first Chancellor of
Trinity College, Dublin between
1592 and
1598.
The American international relations theorist
Hans Morgenthau claimed Burghley accepted a pension (a bribe) from Spain,
[1] although Burghley's biographer Conyers Read has claimed that there is no evidence for this.
[2]
On
25 February 1571, in anticipation of the impending marriage between Cecil's daughter Anne (b. 1556) to
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Queen Elizabeth created him 'Baron Burghley.' The fact that he continued to act as Secretary of State after his elevation illustrates the growing importance of that office, which under his son became a secretary of the ship of state. In 1572, however,
Lord Winchester, who had been
Lord High Treasurer under Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, died, and Burghley succeeded to his post. It was a signal triumph over Leicester; and, although Burghley had still to reckon with
cabals in the council and at court, his hold over the queen strengthened with the lapse of years. He collapsed (possibly from a stroke or heart attack) in 1592. Before he died, Robert, his only surviving son by his second wife, was ready to step into his shoes as the Queen's principal adviser. Having survived all his rivals, and all his children except Robert and Thomas, Burghley died at his
London residence on
4 August 1598, and was buried in St. Martin's church, Stamford.
His younger son,
Sir Robert Cecil (later created
Baron Cecil,
Viscount Cranborne and finally
Earl of Salisbury), inherited his political mantle, taking on the role of chief minister and arranging a smooth transfer of power to the
Stuart administration under
King James I. His elder son,
Sir Thomas Cecil, who inherited the
Barony of Burghley on his death, was later created
Earl of Exeter.
Private life
Burghley's private life was singularly virtuous; he was a faithful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book-lover and antiquary, he made a special
hobby of
heraldry and
genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed
aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of
architecture and
horticulture were lavished on
Burghley House and
Theobalds (which his son, Robert, was to exchange with James I for
Hatfield House). His public conduct does not present itself in quite so amiable a light. As the
Marquess of Winchester (Burghley's predecessor as Lord High Treasurer) had said of himself, Burghley was "sprung from the willow rather than the oak" (in other words, flexible rather than unbending) and he was not the man to suffer for convictions. The interest of the State was the supreme consideration and to it he had no hesitation in sacrificing individual consciences. He frankly disbelieved in toleration; that State, he said, could never be in safety where there was a toleration of two religions. ''"For there is no enmity so great as that for religion; and therefore they that differ in the service of their God can never agree in the service of their country."'' With a
maxim such as this, it was easy for him to maintain that Elizabeth's coercive measures were political and not religious. To say that he was
Machiavellian is meaningless, for every
statesman is so, more or less; especially in the
16th century men preferred efficiency to principle. On the other hand, Burghley may have felt that principles are valueless without
law and order; and that his craft and subtlety prepared a security in which principles might find some scope.
Nicholas White
The most prolonged of Cecil's surviving personal
correspondences is with an
Irish judge, Nicholas White, lasting from 1566 until 1590; it is contained in the ''State Papers Ireland 63'' and ''Lansdowne MS 102'', but receives hardly a mention in the literature on Cecil.
White had been a
tutor to Cecil's children during his student days in London, and the correspondence suggests that he was held in lasting affection by the family. In the end, White fell into a
Dublin controversy over the confessions of an intriguing priest, which threatened the authority of the Queen's deputised government in
Ireland; out of caution Cecil withdrew his longstanding protection, and the judge was imprisoned in London and died soon after.
White's most remarked-upon service for Cecil is his report on his visit with
Mary, Queen of Scots in
1569, during the early years of her imprisonment by Queen Elizabeth. He may have published an English
translation of the ''
Argonautica'' in the
1560s, but no copy has survived.
Trivia
★ William Cecil had ties to many of the proposed
alternative authors of
Shakespeare. He was uncle to
Francis Bacon, his daughter married
Edward de Vere, and
Christopher Marlowe attended Cambridge University while he was chancellor there.
★ Cecil is a major character in the play
Maria Stuart by
Friedrich Schiller. Though the play contains many historical inaccuracies, its portrayal of Cecil as a rival of Dudley and a supporter of Mary’s execution is correct.
Notes
1. Hans J. Morgenthau, ''Politics Among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace. Fifth Edition'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), p. 242.
2. Conyers Read, ''Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth'' (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 190, p. 561, n. 83.
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