William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

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William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley : biography

13 September 1520 – 4 August 1598

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.P. F. Tytler: England under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary London 1839 vol.II pp.192-195

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,P. F. Tytler: England under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary London 1839 vol.II pp.201-207 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 during Henry’s reign, and he made no scruple about conforming to the Catholic reaction. He went to Mass, confessed, and in no particular official capacity went to meet Cardinal Pole on his return to England in December 1554, again accompanying him to Calais in May 1555.

He was elected to Parliament as knight of the shire for Lincolnshire in 1553 (probably), 1555 and 1559 and for Northamptonshire in 1563.

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 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,Francis Peck: Desiderata Curiosa 1732–1735 vol.I p.11 does not represent Cecil’s conduct as having been very courageous; and it is more revealing that he found no seat in the parliament of 1558, for which Mary had directed the return of "discreet and good Catholic members".

Death

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 Welsh Cecils or Sitsylts of Allt-Yr-Ynys, Walterstone,Burghley’s cousin was buried in Walterstone Church; the Cecil coat-of-arms, depicted in stained-glass, originally came from Al(l)t-yr-Ynys on the border of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, and traced his descent from an Owen of the time of King Harold and a Sitsyllt of the reign of William Rufus. Sitsylt is the original Welsh spelling of the anglicised Cecil. There is now no doubt that the family was from the Welsh Marches and Lord Burghley himself acknowledged this in his family pedigree painted at Theobalds.Richardson, Ruth Elizabeth, Mistress Blanche, Queen Elizabeth I’s Confidante, Logaston, 2007, p. 9 & 169; Nichols, John, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, London 1832, vol. III p. 242 The family had connections with Dore Abbey.Richardson 2007, p 9 & 169 However, the move to Stamford provides information concerning the Lord Treasurer’s grandfather, David; he, according to Burghley’s enemies, kept the best inn in Stamford. David somehow secured the favour of the first Tudor 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 Stamford School, which he later saved and endowed. In May 1535, at the age of fourteen, he went to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was brought into contact with the foremost scholars 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, on 21 December 1546 he married Mildred 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, was the wife of Sir Nicholas (and later the mother of Sir Francis) Bacon.