THE GREAT LORD BURGHLEY
[Illustration: _Walker & Boutall, photo._ _McQueen, Sc._]
THE GREAT
LORD BURGHLEY
A STUDY IN ELIZABETHAN
STATECRAFT BY
MARTIN A. S. HUME
AUTHOR OF “THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN
ELIZABETH,” EDITOR OF THE CALENDARS OF SPANISH
STATE PAPERS (PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE)
“_He can never be a good statesman who
respecteth not the public more than his own
private advantage._”—LORD BURGHLEY
London
JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED
21 BERNERS STREET
1898
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press
TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
_Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, K.G._
THIRD MARQUIS OF SALISBURY
PRIME MINISTER OF QUEEN VICTORIA,
THIS ATTEMPT AT A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF
HIS ILLUSTRIOUS ANCESTOR, THE PRIME
MINISTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH,
_is respectfully dedicated by_
MARTIN A. S. HUME.
INTRODUCTION
For nearly half a century William Cecil, Lord Burghley, exercised greater
influence over the future fortunes of England than ever fell to the share
of a statesman before or since. It was a period when Mediæval Europe was
in the melting-pot, from which, in due season, some of her peoples were
to arise bright and shining, with fresh faiths, higher ideals, and nobler
aspirations, to start on a new career of civilisation; whilst others were
still to cling a while longer to the garb of dross which remained of the
old order, and was to hamper them in the times to come.
How England should emerge from the welter of the old tides and the new,
depended to some extent upon providential circumstances, but more largely
still upon the personal characteristics of those who guided her national
policy and that of her competitors. Never was nation more favoured in
this respect than was England at this crisis of the world’s history. The
conditions of the Queen’s birth compelled her to embrace the cause of
religious freedom, whilst her intellect, her sex, and her versatility
enabled her during a long course of years successfully to play off one
continental rival against another, until she was strong enough openly to
grasp and hold the balance. But withal, her vanity, her fickleness, the
folly and greed of her favourites, or the machinations of her enemies,
would inevitably have dragged her to ruin again and again, but for the
fact that she always had near her, in moments of weakness or danger, a
fixed point to which she could turn, a councillor whose gaze was never
diverted from the ultimate goal, a man whom flattery did not move, whom
bribery did not buy—wise, steady William Cecil, who, to her honour and
his, remained her prime adviser from the moment of her accession to the
day of his death.
It has happened that most of the historians who have dealt in detail
with Elizabethan politics, and especially with Cecil’s share in them,
have dwelt mainly upon the religious and ecclesiastical aspect of the
subject, and have usually approached it with a strong doctrinal bias on
one side or the other. It is true that Cecil’s life was coeval with the
rise and triumph of the great religious schism in the Christian faith
in England, that in his boyhood there was hardly a whisper of revolt
against the papal supremacy, and that ere he died the Protestant Church
of England was firmly established, and the country freed from the fears
of Rome. Upon this text most of his biographers have founded their
discourse, and have regarded the great minister as first and foremost
a religious reformer. That he was at heart, at all events in his later
years, sincerely attached to the Protestant faith, there is no reason
to doubt; but before all things, he was a statesman who sought to raise
and strengthen England by political means, and used religion, as he used
other instrumentalities, to attain the object he had in view. He was far
too prudent to say so, but he probably regarded religious dogma in as
broad a spirit as Catharine de Medici, Henry IV., and Elizabeth herself.
His youthful training and early circumstances had associated him with
an advanced school of thinkers, who had naturally adopted the cause of
religious reform, condemned by their opponents. The current of events
and the blindness of the other side identified that party with the cause
of national independence and prosperity; and for political aims, Cecil
made the most of the support to be obtained from those who demanded a
simpler and less rigid form of Christian doctrine than that imposed by
Rome. But in the party of reform Cecil was always the most conservative
element. Other councillors might be, and were, driven hither and thither
by bribery, by passion, by a desire to flatter the Queen’s caprice, by
religious zeal or mere ineptitude, but Cecil was judicious, well-nigh
incorruptible, prudent, patriotic, and clear-headed; and though he was
often obliged to dissemble and give way, he always returned to his point.
Protestant zeal must not hurry the Government too far, or too fast,
against the sworn enemies of Protestantism. England must be kept free
from entanglements with Rome, but she must also avoid as long as possible
national warfare with Rome’s principal supporter; for Spain was England’s
buckler against French aggression, and the possessor of the rich harbours
of the Netherlands where English commerce found its main outlet.
Throughout a long life of ceaseless activity, in which he had to deal
with ever-varying circumstances and problems; hampered by bitter rivals
at home and sleepless enemies abroad, Cecil’s methods shifted so
frequently, and apparently so contradictorily, as to have bewildered most
of those who have essayed to unravel his devious diplomacy. But shift as
he might, there was ever the one stable and changeless principle which
underlay all his policy, and guided all his actions. He had been brought
up in the traditional school of English policy which regarded the House
of Burgundy as a friend, and France as the natural enemy whose designs in
Scotland and Flanders must be frustrated, or England must be politically
and commercially ruined. For centuries England’s standing danger had been
her liability to invasion by the French over the Scottish border, and
for the first forty years of Cecil’s life the main object of English
statecraft was to break permanently the secular connection between
Scotland and France, and to weaken the latter country by favouring her
great rival in Flanders.
When Spain, under rigid Philip, assumed the championship of extreme
Catholicism, and pledged herself to root out the reformed doctrines
throughout Europe, whilst France, on the other hand, was often ruled by
Huguenot counsels, it will be seen that Cecil’s task in endeavouring
to carry out the traditional policy, was a most difficult one, and he
alone of Elizabeth’s ministers was able to preserve his equilibrium in
the face of it. Some of them went too far; drifted into Spanish pay, or
became open Catholics and rebels; others, moved by opposite religious
zeal, lost sight of the political principle, and were for fighting Spain
at all times and at any cost. But Cecil, though sorely perplexed at
times, never lost his judgment. The first article in his political creed
was distrust of the French, and it remained so to the day of his death,
though France was ruled by the ex-champion of the Huguenots, and Spain
and England were still at daggers drawn. In the first year of Elizabeth’s
reign Cecil wrote:[1] “France, being an ancient enemy of England, seeketh
always to make Scotland an instrument to exercise thereby their malice
upon England, and to make a footstool thereof to look over England as
they may;” and forty years afterwards, when the great minister was on the
brink of the grave, De Beaumont, the French ambassador, spoke of him as
still leading “all the old councillors of the Queen who have true English
hearts; that is to say, who are enemies of the welfare and repose of
France.”[2]
To allow the French to become dominant in Scotland would have made
England weak, to have stood by idly whilst they overcame the Netherlands
would have made her poor, and to these national reasons for distrust
of French aims, was added, in Cecil’s case, the personal suspicion and
dislike bred of early associations and tradition. The Queen, on the
other hand, could not be expected to look upon the French in the same
light as her minister. She was as determined as he was that the French
should gain no footing in Flanders or Scotland; but through the critical
times of her girlhood France had always stood her friend, as Spain had
naturally been her enemy. Her mother’s sympathies had, of course, been
entirely French, and her own legitimacy and right to rule were as eagerly
recognised by France as they were sullenly questioned by Spain. But when
passion or persuasion led her into a dangerous course, as they frequently
did, she knew that Cecil, sagacious, and steady as a rock, would advise
her honestly; and sooner or later she would be brought back to his
policy of upholding Protestantism, whilst endeavouring to evade an open
war with the deadly enemy of Protestantism, which could only result in
strengthening France.
The present work will accordingly aim mainly at presenting a panorama of
Cecil’s career as a statesman, whose active life was not only coincident
with the triumph of the Reformation, but also with the making of Modern
England, and with the establishment of her naval supremacy. In the
space available it will be impossible to relate in detail the whole of
the complicated political transactions of the long and important reign
of Elizabeth, and no attempt will be made to do so. But Cecil, to his
lasting glory, did more than any other man to guide the nation into the
groove of future greatness; and the primary object of this book is to
trace his personal and political influence over the events of his time:
to show the effects produced by his clear head and steady hand on the
councils of the able and fortunate sovereign, who transformed England
from a feeble and distracted, to a powerful and united, nation.
The task of writing the life of Lord Burghley has been attempted more
than once, but in every case with but indifferent success. The failure
has certainly not been caused by lack of material, for no English
statesman was ever so indefatigable a correspondent and draftsman as
Cecil, and the stupendous masses of manuscript left behind by him
frightened even the indefatigable Camden from the work of writing an
account of Cecil’s ministry three centuries ago. “But,” he writes, “at
my very first entrance upon the task, an intricate difficulty did in a
manner wholly discourage me, for I lighted upon great files and heaps
of papers and writings of all sorts, … in searching and turning over
whereof, whilst I laboured till I sweat again, covered all over with
dust, to gather fit matter together, … that noble lord died, and my
industry began to flag and wax cold.” Strype also, who has reproduced
so many important documents relating to Cecil in his “Annals of the
Reformation,” and “Ecclesiastical Memorials,” was preparing materials for
a life of the statesman, when death stopped his labour. Besides several
less pretentious works by various authors, and the curious contemporary
memoirs published in Peck’s _Desiderata Curiosa_, a spirited attempt
was made seventy years ago by Dr. Nares, Regius Professor of History at
Oxford, to produce a book worthy of the subject. After many years of
laborious plodding through countless thousands of documents, the worthy
professor produced one of the most ponderous and unreadable books in
the English language, of which Lord Macaulay made merciless sport in
his famous essay on Burghley. “Compared,” he says, “with the labour
of reading through these volumes, all other labour, of thieves on the
treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes on sugar-plantations, is
an agreeable recreation.… Guicciardini, although certainly not the most
amusing of writers, is a Herodotus or a Froissart when compared with Dr.
Nares.”
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. The Burghley Papers at the Record Office are
almost innumerable, the foreign documents subsequent to 1577 being
still uncalendared, whilst the priceless collection in the possession
of Lord Salisbury at Hatfield consists of over 30,000 documents,
bound in 210 large volumes. From comparatively early times many of
the more interesting of these papers have been in print. The _Scrinia
Ceciliana_ in the third edition of Cabala, “The Compleat Ambassador,”
the “Sadler State Papers,” Haynes’ and Murdin’s selections from the
Hatfield archives, Forbes’ “Public Transactions,” Birch’s “Memoirs of
Elizabeth,” Burgon’s “Sir Thomas Gresham,” Nicholas’ “Sir Christopher
Hatton,” Burnet, Collier, Lodge, Strype, Foxe, Ellis, the Harleian
Miscellany, and Tytler contain a great number of original documents from
Cecil’s collections. Above all—since the excellent sketch of Cecil in
the “Dictionary of National Biography” was written—the Historical MSS.
Commission have completed the six volumes of Calendars of the Hatfield
Papers to 1597, and the Calendars of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth
have been published by the Record Office. By the aid of these, and the
Domestic and Foreign Calendars of State Papers, it is now, for the first
time, possible to obtain a comprehensive view in an accessible form of
thousands of documents which have hitherto been difficult or impossible
to reach; and obstacles which have marred the success of previous labours
in the same field, may, it is hoped, now be more easily surmountable. The
sources above mentioned have all been placed under contribution for the
production of the present summary account of Cecil’s political life, as
well as some uncalendared manuscripts kindly placed at my disposal by the
Marquis of Salisbury.
I cannot hope to have succeeded entirely where others have failed, but I
have not spared time or labour in the attempt; and I have endeavoured, at
least, to prevent my view of the events themselves from being obstructed
by the documents which relate to them; and, so far as is possible in a
short readable book, to present a general view of the policy of the reign
of Elizabeth, especially with relation to the influence exerted upon it
by her principal minister.
I have written with no preconceived theory to prove, no religious or
political aim to serve, or doctrine to establish. My only desire has
been to follow facts whithersoever they may lead me, and to pourtray a
lofty personality who has left an enduring impress on the history of his
country. I have not sought to present Cecil as a demigod—or even as a
genius of the first class—as most of his biographers have done. The ways
and methods of Elizabethan statesmen need not be concealed or apologised
for because they do not square with the ethics of to-day. At a time when
the bulk of the English people cheerfully changed their faith four times
in a generation to please their rulers, it would be absurd to hold up to
especial obloquy a minister for having persecuted at one time a religion
which at another time he professed. The final triumph of England in that
struggle of giants was won by statesmen who, like their mistress, owed
as much to what we should now call their failings as they did to their
virtues. Their vacillation and tergiversation in the face of rigid and
stolid opponents were main elements of their success. Cecil was by far
the most honest and patriotic of them; but he, too, was a man of his age,
and must be judged from its standpoint—not from that of to-day. If I have
succeeded in presenting more clearly than some of my predecessors a view
of the process by which England was made great, the man who, above all
others, was instrumental under God in making it so, may well be judged
by the splendid results of his lifelong labour; and his reputation for
religious constancy, moral generosity, and political scrupulousness,
placed in the opposite scale, will hardly stir the balance.
MARTIN A. S. HUME
LONDON, _September 1898_.
THE GREAT LORD BURGHLEY
CHAPTER I
1520-1549
It may be stated as an historical truism that great organic changes in
the relationship of human beings towards each other are usually preceded
by periods of quiescence and apparent stability, during which unsuspected
forces of preparation are at work. When the moment of crisis comes, the
unthinking marvel that men are ready, as if by magic, to accept, and,
if need be, to fight and die for, the new order of ideas. Although the
outward manifestation of it may be unexpected, yet, in reality, no vast,
far-reaching revolution in human institutions is sudden: only that the
short-sightedness of all but the very wisest fails to see the signs until
the forces are openly arrayed and the battle set.
The period of the struggle for religious reform in Europe was preceded by
such a process of unconscious preparation as this. Over a century elapsed
from the martyrdom of John Huss before the bold professor of Wittemberg
dared to denounce the Pope’s indulgences. It is true that during that
century, and before, satirists and moralists had often pointed the finger
of contumely at the corruption of the clergy and the lax discipline of
the Church, but no word had been raised against her doctrines. In the
meanwhile, the subterranean process which was sapping the foundations
of the meek submission of old, was progressing apace with the spread of
printed books and the revival of the study of Greek and Hebrew. By the
time that Luther first made his daring stand, the learning of cultivated
laymen, thanks to Erasmus and others, had far outstripped the cramped
erudition of the friars; and when at last a churchman thundered from the
Saxon pulpit his startling doctrine of papal fallibility, there were
thousands of men throughout Europe who were able to do without monkish
commentators, and could read the Scriptures in the original tongues,
forming their own judgment of right and wrong by the unobscured light of
the inspired Word itself.
Thus it happened that the cry for radical religious reform in 1517 found
a world waiting for it, and in an incredibly few years the champions of
the old and the new had taken sides ready for the struggle which was to
decide the fate of civilisation for centuries to come. By an apparently
providential concurrence of circumstances, the personal characters and
national ambitions of rulers at the same period were such as to enlist
the hardiest and most tenacious of the European peoples on the side of
freedom from spiritual and intellectual trammels; and eventually to ally
the idea of political emancipation and personal liberty with that of
religious reform, to the immense strengthening of both. The fight was to
be a long and varied one; it can hardly, indeed, be looked upon as ended
even now. Many of the combatants have fainted by the way, and both sides
have belied their principles again and again; but looking back over the
field, we can see the ground that has been won, and are assured that
in the long-run the powers of progress must prevail, as we hope and
believe, to the greater glory of God and the greater happiness of men.
The year 1520 saw the first open marshalling of the powers for the great
struggle, partly religious and partly political, which was to lead to the
triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race. In England, as yet, there was no whisper
of revolt against the authority of the papacy. The King had just written
his book against the new doctrines of Luther, which was to gain for him
the title of Defender of the Faith; Catharine, the Spanish Queen-Consort,
an obedient child of the Church, as became the daughter of Isabel the
Catholic, lived in yet unruffled happiness with her husband; whilst the
all-ruling Wolsey was plotting and intriguing for the reversion of the
triple tiara of St. Peter when Pope Leo should die. The first step to
the political rise of England was the election (June 1519) of young King
Charles of Spain to the imperial crown of Germany, in succession to his
grandfather, Maximilian of Hapsburg. The marriage of the new Emperor’s
father, Philip of Hapsburg, the heir of Burgundy, with Jane the Mad, the
heiress of Spain, had joined to her heritage Flanders, Holland, and the
Franche Comté, and had already upset the balance of power. Francis I. had
sought to redress matters by securing his own election to the empire,
but he had been frustrated, and he saw a Spanish prince in possession
of territory on every side of France, shutting her in. Naples had been
filched by greedy Ferdinand, and was now firmly Spanish, as Sicily had
been for centuries; the Emperor asserted suzerainty over most of Italy,
and, above all, over Milan, which Francis himself claimed and occupied.
It was clear that the expansion of France was at an end, and her national
decline must commence, unless the iron bands braced around her by the
Hispano-Germanic Empire could be broken through. It was then that the
importance of England as the potential balancing power between the
two great rivals became evident. Henry VIII. was rich in money, able,
ambitious, and popular. He had devoted all his great energy to improving
the resources of his country, and to reconstructing his navy; besides
which he held Calais, the key to the frontier battle-ground of Flanders
and France, and was as fully conscious of his rising importance as he was
determined to carry it to the best market.
It had been for many years the main point of English foreign policy to
counteract the unification of France by maintaining a close connection
with the House of Burgundy, as possessors of Flanders and Holland, the
principal markets for the English wool and cloth. This policy had drawn
England and Spain together when the inheritances of Spain and Burgundy
were united, and it had also led to the marriage of Catharine of Aragon
in England. But Henry’s desire to hold the balance, and Wolsey’s greed
and ambition, had made them willing to listen to the blandishments of
Francis, and to consent to the distrustful and pompous comedy of the
Field of the Cloth of Gold. Charles, the new Emperor, had shown his
appreciation of the threatened friendship between France and England,
by his Quixotic rush over to England to see Henry earlier in the year
(1520). His stay was a short one, only four days, but it was sufficient
for his purpose. He could promise more to Wolsey than Francis could, and
Henry’s vanity was flattered at the young Emperor’s chivalrous trust in
him. When Charles sailed from Dover, he knew full well that, however
splendid and friendly might be the interviews of the Field of the Cloth
of Gold, Francis would not have the King of England on his side in the
inevitable coming war, even if he did not fight against him.
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.
In his after life, when he had become famous, Cecil drew up in his
own hand a private journal (now in the British Museum), in which he
endeavoured to set down in chronological order the principal events of
his life. It will be seen, by the specimen line reproduced under the
portrait, that he was in some confusion as to the year of his birth and
other events of his earlier years. The entry relating to his birth, as
first made, is against the year 1521, and reads, “13ᵒ Sep. Ego Gulielm.
Cecill natˢ sū, apud Burne in Com̄ Lincoln̄i;” but afterwards the date
was crossed out and entered above the line, so as to correspond with the
year 1520, whilst the blank against the year 1521 is filled in with the
mention of the arrival of the Emperor Charles V. in London on the 5th
June of that year. This also is a mistake, as the Emperor’s second visit
was in June 1522. The entry with regard to Cecil’s becoming a student
at Gray’s Inn in 1541 mentions that he was at that time twenty-one
years of age, so that it may be concluded that the year of his birth
was really 1520, although 1521 has usually been given by his earlier
biographers. There is at Hatfield a little book which appears not to
have been noticed or calendared, but which is, nevertheless, interesting
for purposes of comparison, as I conclude it to have been the foundation
or rough draft of the journal. It is a small perpetual calendar bound
up with a custom-house tariff: “Imprinted at London at the Longe Shop
adjoining St. Mildred’s Church in the Pultrie, London, by John Alde,
anno 1562.” In this calendar the entry relating to his birth runs thus:
“13ᵗʰ Sep. 1521. Ego Gul. Cecill natus sū: 13 Sept. 1521, between 3 and
4 P.M.;” whilst his entering Gray’s Inn is stated as follows: “6ᵗʰ May,
33 Henry VIII. Gul. Cecill veni ad Graye’s Inn.” No age is given in this
case, so that it may probably be concluded that on copying the entries
into his permanent journal he recollected the age at which he became a
law student, and then saw that he was born a year earlier than he had
originally thought, and at once corrected the statement he had written.
The question of his remote ancestry is of no great importance to the
purpose of the present book, although Cecil himself, who throughout
his life was a diligent student of heraldry and genealogy, devoted
considerable attention to it; and Camden was at the pains to trace
his descent to a Robert Sitsilt, a gentleman of Wales in the time of
William Rufus (1091). It may be sufficient for our purpose to adhere
to a written pedigree at Hatfield House annotated and continued by
William Cecil, which proves, so far as such documents can, that the
statements made by his opponents to the end of his life that he was of
“base origin,” were entirely untrue. This pedigree traces the descent
of the statesman’s great-grandfather Richard Sitsilt, who died in 1508
possessing considerable estates in Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, to
the ancient Welsh family of Sitsilt; but its interest and trustworthiness
really commences with Cecil’s own continuation of the pedigree from his
great-grandfather to himself. At the end of the engrossed genealogy he
has written, “Here endeth ye old Roole in parchmᵗ,” and “The contynuance
of ye line in ye heyres males untill this yere 1565.” This continuation
shows that his grandfather David, the third son of Richard Sitsilt,
came across England and settled at Stamford,[3] whilst his elder
brothers remained in possession of the ancestral acres at Alterennes,
Herefordshire. In the perpetual calendar at Hatfield, this David’s
death is recorded by his grandson as follows: “David Cecill avus meus
obiit Oct. 27 Hen. VIII.”[4] (1535). He was an alderman of Stamford,
and appears to have possessed a good estate in Lincolnshire, which he
purchased in 1507; and was appointed in 1512 Water-bailiff of Wittlesea
Mere, in Huntingdonshire, and Keeper of the Swans throughout all the fen
country.
Soon after the accession of Henry VIII., David Cecil, the substantial
Lincolnshire squire, became a courtier, and was made one of the King’s
serjeants-at-arms. Thenceforward royal grants and offices came to him
plentifully, stewardships of crown lands, the escheatorship of Lincoln,
the shrievalty of Northampton, and the like, which must have added
greatly both to his wealth and his importance. No indication has ever
been given of the reasons for his court favour, but it may be conjectured
to have arisen from the friendship of his powerful neighbour Lord
Willoughby d’Eresby of Grimsthorpe, who married Maria de Sarmiento,
Queen Catharine’s dearest friend and inseparable companion; as the
connection between Lady Willoughby’s daughter, the Duchess of Suffolk,
and William Cecil, remained almost on a sisterly footing throughout the
lady’s life. In any case, David’s influence at court was sufficient
to obtain for his son Richard, the statesman’s father, a succession of
lucrative offices. He was one of the King’s pages, and is said to have
attended the sovereign to the Field of the Cloth of Gold a few months
before William Cecil was born, and he subsequently became Groom of the
Wardrobe, and Yeoman of the Robes. He, like the rest of the King’s
favourites, fattened on the spoils of the monasteries, and stewardships
of royal manors showered upon him. 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.
Little is known, or need be told, of Cecil’s early youth. He went to
school successively at Grantham and Stamford, and in May 1535, when he
was fifteen years of age, entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, to
embark upon deeper studies. His anonymous biographer, who lived in his
household in his later years, and can only have spoken by hearsay of
his college days, says[5] that he was so “diligent and paineful as he
hired a bell-ringer to call him up at foure of the clock every morninge;
with which early rising and late watchinge, and continuall sitting,
there fell abundance of humours into his leggs, then very hardly cured,
which was thought one of the original causes of his gowt.” It is, at
all events, certain that he threw himself with avidity into the studies
which were then especially claiming the attention of scholars, and in
a very short time became remarkable for his wide knowledge of Greek
especially, and for his extraordinary general aptitude and application.
It is said, indeed, that he gratuitously read the Greek lecture at St.
John’s before he was nineteen years of age. By good fortune it happened
that the University was at the time of his residence the centre of a
new intellectual movement, the young leaders of which at once became
Cecil’s chosen friends. Already the new learning had taken fast hold of
the brighter spirits, and although Luther’s works were openly forbidden,
they were secretly read by a little company of students who met for the
purpose at a tavern in Cambridge called the White Horse; Erasmus had
left memories of his teaching behind him at Queen’s, and Melancthon’s
books were eagerly studied. A brilliant young King’s scholar, named
Thomas Smith, read the Greek lectures at Queen’s College, and assembled
under him a band of scholars, such as have rarely been united at one
time. Cheke, Ascham, Matthew Parker, Nicholas Bacon, Bill, Watson, and
Haddon, amongst many others, who afterwards achieved fame, were Cecil’s
intimate companions; and Cheke especially, who belonged to the same
college, and was somewhat older, systematically helped him, doubtless for
a consideration. Cheke’s capacity was almost as remarkable as that of his
fellow King’s scholar, Smith. He was poor, but of ancient family, the son
of a college-beadle whose widow on his death had to maintain her children
by keeping a wine-shop in the town; although he subsequently became the
Regius Professor of Greek, and tutor to Edward VI., and, by the aid of
Smith, reformed the vicious pronunciation of Latin and Greek upon which
the Churchmen had insisted. Humble John Cheke was Cecil’s bosom friend,
and to his mother’s wine-shop the rich courtier’s son must often have
been a welcome visitor.
Details of his daily life are wanting, but he must have been a
well-conducted youth, for the amount of study he got through was
prodigious. Catharine de Medici, years afterwards (1563), spitefully told
Smith—then Sir Thomas, and an ambassador—that Cecil had had a son at the
age of fifteen or sixteen,[6] to which Smith, who must have known whether
it was true or not, made no reply; but she probably spoke at random, and
referred to Cecil’s early marriage. He left the University after six
years’ residence, without taking his degree. Whether his father withdrew
him because of his close intimacy with the family of the wine-shop
keeper, is not known, but is probable. In his own hand he states that he
was entered a student of Gray’s Inn, in May 1541, and that on the 8th
August of the same year he married Mary Cheke, of Cambridge, the sister
of his friend.[7] The next entry in the diary records, under date of 5th
May 1542, the birth of his eldest son, Thomas Cecil, his own age at the
time being twenty-two (Natus est mihi Thomas Cecil filius; cum essem
natus annos xxii.). In the Perpetual Calendar at Hatfield it is mentioned
that the child was born at Cambridge, so that it may be assumed that
Cecil’s wife still lived with her own people. The next entry to that
relating the birth of the future Lord Exeter, records the death of his
young mother thus: “22 Feb. 1543, Maria uxor mortua est in Domine, hora
2ᵃ nocte,”[8] and with this bare statement the story of Cecil’s first
marriage ends, though he never lost touch with or interest in the Cheke
family, who appear to have been equally attached to him.
It may be questioned whether Cecil went deeply into the study of law at
Gray’s Inn. It was usual to enter young gentlemen at one of the inns of
court to give them some definite standing or pursuit in London, rather
than with a view of their becoming practising lawyers. It is almost
certain from a statement of his household biographer,[9] that such was
the case with Cecil. “He alwaies praised the study of the common law
above all other learning: saying ‘that if he shoulde begyene againe he
would follow that studie.’” He probably passed much of his time about the
court; and his domestic tells a story of him in this connection, which
may well be true, but which rests upon his authority alone. He was, he
says, in the presence-chamber, where he met two chaplains of O’Neil, who
was then (1542) on a visit to the King; “and talking long with them in
Lattin, he fell in disputation with the priests, wherein he showed so
great learning and witt, as he proved the poore priests to have neither,
who weare so putt down as they had not a word to saie, but flung away no
less discontented than ashamed to be foiled in such a place by so younge
a berdless yewth.”[10] The chronicler goes on to say that the King being
told of this, Cecil was summoned to the royal presence, and delighted
Henry with his answers; Richard Cecil, the father, being directed by the
King to seek out some office or favour which might be bestowed upon his
clever son. The Yeoman of the Robes, we may be sure, was nothing loath,
and petitioned in William Cecil’s name for the reversion of the office of
_custos brevium_ in the Court of Common Pleas, which was duly granted,
and was the first of the future great statesman’s many offices of profit
received from the Crown.
At about the same time, or shortly afterwards (1544), Cecil’s connection
with the court was made closer by the appointment of his brother-in-law,
John Cheke, to be tutor to the young Prince Edward, and of his friend,
Roger Ascham, to a similar position to the Princess Elizabeth. A general
supervision over the studies of Prince Edward was entrusted to his
governor, Sir Anthony Cooke, who was one of the pioneers of the new
learning, and a member of the Protestant party in Henry’s court led by
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Prince Edward’s uncle. The secular
educational movement, which was now in full swing, had spread to the
training of girls of the upper classes. The working of tapestry and the
cares of a household were no longer regarded as the sole ends and aims of
a lady’s life, and it was a fashion at court for Greek and Latin, as well
as modern languages, to be imparted to the daughters of gentlemen of the
newer school. Amongst the first of the ladies to be thus highly educated
were the four daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, who were afterwards to be
celebrated as the most learned women in England, at a time when education
had become a feminine fad under the learned Elizabeth. To the eldest of
these paragons of learning, Mildred Cooke, aged twenty, William Cecil was
married on the 21st December 1545, and thus bound himself by another
link to the rising progressive party at court.[11]
Already the struggle of the Reformation on the Continent had begun. The
Emperor, alarmed at the firm stand made by the Protestant princes of
the empire, had hastily made peace with Francis I., and had left his
ally the King of England in the lurch. The spectre of Lutheranism had
drawn together the lifelong rivals with the secret object of crushing
religious dissent, which struck at the root of their temporal authority.
The ambition of Maurice of Saxony, and disunion in the Protestant ranks,
enabled Charles to destroy the Smalkaldic league, and in April 1547,
after the battle of Muhlberg, to impose his will upon the empire. Henry
VIII. had deeply resented the desertion of his ally Charles V., when
in December 1544 he had been left to fight Francis alone, and during
the closing years of his life the Protestant influence in his Councils
grew stronger than ever. The old King died on the 28th January 1547.
Parliament was sitting at the time, but the King’s death was kept secret
for nearly three days, and it was Monday, 31st January, before Lord
Chancellor Wriothesley, his voice broken by sobs, informed the Houses
of Parliament that King Edward VI. had ascended the throne, under the
regency, during his minority, of the Council nominated in King Henry’s
will. The star of Seymour and the Protestants had risen, and soon
those papistically inclined, like Wriothesley, and Gardiner, Bishop of
Winchester, shed tears indeed for the master they had lost, schismatic
though he was.
With such friends in the dominant party as Cooke, Cheke, Cranmer, and
Seymour, it is not surprising that William Cecil’s career emerged from
obscurity and uncertainty almost as soon as the new Government was
established. For a young man of twenty-seven he had already not done
badly. His father was still alive, but in the first year of Edward VI.
the office of _custos brevium_, of which the old King had given him the
reversion five years before, fell in, and this brought him, in salary and
fees, £240 per annum (£6, 13s. 4d. salary and rest fees at the four law
terms), and in addition to this, according to his household biographer,
the Lord Protector appointed him his Master of Requests soon after
assuming power. That he held some such office from the summer of 1547 is
certain, as from that date forward great numbers of letters exist written
to him in relation to suits and petitions addressed to the Protector.
The office, as then constituted, appears to have been an innovation, as
being attached to Somerset’s personal household,[12] and intended to
relieve him from the trouble of himself examining petitions and suits. In
any case Cecil’s assiduity and patience appear thus early to have been
acknowledged, to judge by the tone of most of his correspondents, many
of whom belonged to a much more exalted social position than himself.
In June 1547 Sir Thomas Darcy informs him[13] that (evidently by order)
he had inquired into the love affair between “Mistress Dorothy” and the
young Earl of Oxford—who was a ward—and desires to know whether the
Protector wishes the match to be prevented or not; and in the following
month Lady Browne wrote to him in terms of intimate friendship, begging
him to use his influence with Somerset to appoint her brother to the
coming expedition to Scotland.[14]
The master and fellows of his old college, St. John’s, too, were
anxious to propitiate the rising official and to bespeak his interest
in favour of their foundation,[15] and the widowed Duchess of Suffolk
(Lady Willoughby) consulted him in all her difficulties. The war with
France was suspended, though the English forces holding Boulogne were
closely beleaguered, and Somerset’s greed was diverting the money which
should have been spent in war preparations; but in pursuance of the
traditional policy of England, it became a question almost of national
existence when it was seen that the French intrigues for the marriage of
the child Queen of Scots and the final suppression of the rising reform
party in Scotland were likely to succeed. Arran had signed the treaty
with Henry for the marriage of Edward and Mary; but he, and especially
the Queen-mother, Mary of Lorraine, had resisted the deportation of the
infant Queen to England. It is possible that some arrangement might
have been arrived at had not the ill-advised murder of Cardinal Beaton
and the subsequent anarchy given to the new King of France, Henry II.,
an excuse for armed interference in protection of the Catholic party.
Then it became incumbent upon the Protector to fight the Scots at all
hazards, or French influence over the Border threatened to become
permanent; a double danger, now that the religious question tended to
alienate England from her secular alliance with the House of Burgundy.
When Somerset made his rapid march upon Scotland with an army of 18,000
men, supported by a powerful fleet, in September 1547, his trusted
Cecil attended him in the capacity apparently of provost-marshal, in
conjunction with the chronicler of the campaign, William Patten.[16] The
decisive battle of Pinkie was fought on the 10th September 1547, and was
in a great measure won by the dash, at a critical moment, of the Spanish
and Italian auxiliaries whom Somerset had enlisted. According to the
“household” historian so often quoted,[17] Cecil narrowly escaped death
from a cannon shot at Pinkie, but no other mention of the fact is to be
found. It has been doubted whether at this time he held still the office
of Master of Requests, in which he is said to have been succeeded by his
old college friend Sir Thomas Smith,[18] but there was no break in his
close connection in some capacity with the Protector. About five months
after Pinkie, in a letter to Lord Cobham, Somerset calls him “my servant
William Cecill,”[19] and refers to letters written to him on his behalf;
and in June 1548 the powerful Earl of Warwick, who was soon to supplant
Somerset, writes to Cecil, almost humbly thanking him for forwarding some
request of his to the Protector.[20]
Cecil’s position, however, shortly after this becomes clearly defined,
and his personality emerges into full daylight. Against the year 1548 in
his journal, the only entry is as follows: “Mes. Sep. _co-optatus sū in
ofᵐ Secretarij_.” This has often given rise to confusion as to the date
of his first appointment as Secretary of State, but there is now no room
for doubt that the office to which this entry refers is that of Secretary
to Somerset; and the appointment, like that of Master of Requests, was
part of the Protector’s system of surrounding himself with a household as
near as possible modelled on that of the King.
Thenceforward everything that did not strictly appertain to the
official Secretaries of State went through the hands of Cecil, who in
the meanwhile was imbibing the traditions of statecraft which were to
guide him through life. Already the cabal against Somerset had been in
progress before he went to Scotland, and had caused him to hurry back
before he gained the full fruits of his victory at Pinkie. Mary of
Lorraine and the Scottish nobles had almost unanimously rallied now to
the French side, and had agreed to give the young Queen in marriage to
the Dauphin, whilst strong reinforcements were sent to Scotland from
France. Bound though he was to the extreme Protestant party, Somerset
was therefore obliged to turn to the arch-enemy of Protestantism, the
Emperor, for support and assistance. Charles had his hands full with his
vast new projects of universal domination for his son, and was postponing
the inevitable war with France as long as possible, and consequently
turned a deaf ear to Somerset’s approaches. Public discontent, artfully
encouraged by the Protector’s enemies, grew daily more dangerous. His
brother, the Lord Admiral, had sought to depose him, and fell a victim
to his own foolishness and ambition (20th March 1549). The attempt to
interfere with the religious service in the house of the Princess Mary
made Somerset even more unpopular, alienated the Emperor still further,
and enraged those who yet clung to the remnants of the old faith. Then
came the great rising in the West, the revolt of the commons throughout
Eastern and Central England against the enclosures carried out by the
land-grabbing crew that surrounded Somerset. In April 1549 Cecil was
trying to obtain a grant of the rectory and manor of Wimbledon, in which
he eventually succeeded, and he appears to have purchased at the same
time some fen lands near Spalding; but although he was in the midst of
affairs, and must have been the Protector’s right hand in most things, he
was sagacious enough at so dangerous a time to keep to the routine work
of his office, and avoided all responsibility on his own account.
When Warwick came back from his ruthless campaign against the peasants
of Norfolk, flushed with an easy victory, the idol of a discontented and
partly foreign soldiery, the time was ripe for him to strike his blow.
Gardiner and Bonner were in the Tower, the Catholic party were being
harried and persecuted throughout the country, the French and Scots in
Scotland were now strong and invincible, the French fleet dominated the
Channel, the town of Boulogne was known to be untenable; and, above
all, an unpaid victorious soldiery looked to Warwick as their champion.
Warwick himself laid the blame for all troubles and shortcomings upon
the Protector, and summoning the officers of his army to Ely Place,
constituted himself their spokesman for obtaining their pay. Through
Wriothesley—now Southampton—Somerset’s enemy, he persuaded the Catholics
that he disapproved of the religious pressure that was being exercised.
The first step taken openly for the overthrow of the Protector appears to
be a letter written by Warwick to Cecil,[21] on the 14th September 1549,
which shows, amongst other things, the high esteem in which the secretary
was held. “To my very loving friend, Mr Cecille,” it runs,—“These shall
be to desire you to be an intercessor to my Lord’s Grace that this
bearer, Thomas Drury, captain of nine-score footmen, serving the King’s
Majesty in Norfolk, should receive for them his pay for the space of two
months.” Warwick knew full well that no money would be forthcoming for
these men’s pay, and that the Protector was already being deserted by the
councillors, who were finding excuses for meeting with Warwick at Ely
Place rather than with Somerset at Hampton Court. At length the Protector
could shut his eyes no longer to the desertion. The only councillors
who were at Hampton Court with him were Cranmer, Sir William Paget, Sir
William Petre, and Sir Thomas Smith, Secretaries of State, and his own
secretary, William Cecil. The meetings at Ely Place and the growing storm
against him found Somerset unprotected and unprepared. On the 1st October
he issued a proclamation calling upon the lieges to muster and defend
the King; but most of his advisers near him deprecated the use of force,
which they knew would be fruitless against Warwick and the troops, and
his divided councils only resulted in the dissemination of anonymous
handbills and circulars stating that the King’s person was in danger from
Warwick, and the summoning of such nobles as were thought most likely
to be favourable to the Protector’s cause. Secretary Petre, who had
advocated an agreement, was on the 7th October sent to London to confer
with Warwick, but he betrayed his trust and returned no more. The King
and the Protector had in the meanwhile removed to Windsor for greater
security; but Warwick had gained the Tower and had conciliated the city
of London, and it was clear to all now, that Somerset’s power was gone.
All fell away from him, except only Sir Thomas Smith. The two principal
generals in arms, Lords Russell and Herbert, rallied to Warwick. Cranmer
and Paget, it is true, remained by the side of the Protector, but,
like Petre, they played him false. No word or sign is given of Cecil,
though he too remained with his master; but it is significant that all
the letters to Warwick at the time are in the handwriting of Sir Thomas
Smith, and at this moment of difficulty and danger sagacious Cecil
recedes into the position of a private secretary, sheltered behind the
responsibility of his master.
In vain Somerset, at the prompting of Cranmer and Paget, sought to
make terms with Warwick. Finding that Petre did not return to Windsor,
but that the Lords in London demanded unconditional submission, the
Protector, in the name of the King, sent Sir Philip Hoby on the 8th
October with an appeal _ad misericordiam_ to Warwick. “Marry,” says the
letter, “to put himself simply into your hands, having heard as he and
we have, without knowing upon what conditions, is not reasonable. Life
is sweet, my Lords, and they say you do seek his blood and his death.…
Wherefore, good my Lords, we beseech you again and again, if you have
conceived any such determination, to put it out of your heads, and
incline your hearts to kindness and humanity, remembering that he hath
never been cruel to any of you, and why should you be cruelly minded to
him.”[22]
This appeal was supported by a passionate prayer from Smith to Petre
for clemency to the Protector. But Hoby also played false, and delayed
his return until Warwick had secured the formal adhesion of Russell and
Herbert. He then returned to Windsor with Warwick’s secret ultimatum to
Cranmer, Smith, and Paget, warning them to desert the Protector, or be
prepared to share his fate. Cranmer and Paget gave way, and washed their
hands of the betrayal; Smith stood firm, and faced the consequence;
whilst Cecil discreetly retired into the background, and apparently did
nothing, though he was certainly present when Hoby delivered his official
message, solemnly promising that no harm was intended, or would be done,
to Somerset or his friends; “upon this all the aforenamed there present
wept for joy, and prayed for the Lords. Mr. Comptroller (Paget) fell down
on his knees, and clasped the Duke about the knees, and weeping said,
‘O! my Lord, ye see now what my Lords be.’” Paget’s crocodile tears were
hardly dry before he sent a servant post-haste to London, saying that the
Protector was now off his guard, and might easily be seized. The next
day Somerset was a prisoner, and three days afterwards was in the Tower.
Smith, Cecil, Thynne, and Stanhope were placed under arrest in their own
apartments, whilst Cranmer, Paget, and Petre reaped the reward of their
apostasy.[23]
When the Protector was sent to the Tower, all of his friends were made
his fellow-prisoners except Cecil. Smith was dismissed from his offices,
and threatened with the extreme penalty for treason; but Cecil, the
Protector’s right hand, through whom all his patronage had passed,
escaped punishment at the time[24] (13th October 1549). Warwick was
apparently an old friend of his father,[25] and had unquestionably a
great opinion of Cecil’s own application and sagacity. This may have
inclined him to leniency in his case, but for some reason not disclosed
he was certainly a prisoner in the Tower in the following month. In a
letter from his friend the Duchess of Suffolk, dated 16th November 1549
(Lansdowne MSS., 2, 24), she condoles with him for “the loss of his
place in _the Duke of Somerset’s family_,”[26] but says nothing to lead
to the idea that he is in prison. But in the holograph journal already
quoted, there is an entry—although, curiously enough, out of its proper
position, and opposite the year 1547, saying, “_Mēse Novēb aₒ 3ᵒ E vi.
fui in Turre_;” and his household biographer also records the fact as
follows: “In the _second_ year of K. Edward VI. he (Cecil) was committed
to the Tower about the Duke of Somerset’s first calling in question,
remaining there a quarter of a year, and was then enlarged;” but, as
has already been explained, this life was written in the minister’s old
age, and as he certainly was not in the Tower as a prisoner twice, the
imprisonment referred to must have been that of November 1549 (3rd Edward
VI.). There is, in any case, a gap in all known records with regard to
Cecil for several months after Somerset’s disgrace, and he evidently
had no share in public affairs for nearly a year after Warwick’s (now
Northumberland’s) rise, during which time Sir William Petre and Dr.
Wotton—who succeeded Smith—were joint Secretaries of State.