A syndicate had been formed, in which Dudley, Wynter (Master of the Ordnance), Gonson (Controller of the Navy), Sir William Garrard, and probably the Queen herself, had shares, to send out a strong expedition to establish a permanent trading-station on the Gold Coast.[155] There were to be at least four ships, one of which, the Mignon, belonged to the Queen. Protests and remonstrances from Portuguese and Spaniards were freely made to Cecil, who replied they could not prevent merchants from going to trade where they thought fit. When the Bishop of Aquila pressed him further, he answered, “that the Pope had no right to partition the world and to give and take kingdoms.… This idea is the real reason which moved them to oppose the legality of our denunciation of these expeditions much more than any profit they expect to get.… They think this navigation business will be a good pretext for breaking the peace, as your Majesty must needs uphold the Pope’s authority, against which, both here and in Germany, all will join. I feigned not to understand Cecil’s meaning, and treated the matter as concerning the King of Portugal only” (27th November 1561).[156] A draft reply in Cecil’s hand to similar remonstrances from the Portuguese Ambassador in April of the same year, is still more dignified: “The Queen does not acknowledge the right of the King of Portugal to forbid the subjects of another prince from trading where they like, and she will take care that her subjects are not worse treated in the King of Portugal’s dominions than his are in hers.”[157]
Amidst his manifold public anxieties Cecil had to bear his share of private trouble. His notes in the Perpetual Calendar at Hatfield record the successive births and deaths of two infant William Cecils, one at Cannon Row in 1559, and the other at Wimbledon in 1561; but at this period he had a daughter and a son living, by his second wife. Thomas, his only son by his first marriage with Mary Cheke, was now a young man of twenty, and in order that he might receive the polish fitting to the heir of a great personage, his father consulted Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, the Ambassador in Paris, in the spring of 1561, with regard to sending him thither. Cecil’s own idea was to place him in the household of Coligny, the Admiral of France, now one of the acknowledged leaders of the Protestant party; but Throgmorton, who foresaw, doubtless, the rapidly approaching civil war, dissuaded him from this. “Though you have made the best choice of any man in France, yet for some respects I think the matter should be deferred.” His advice was that lodgings should be taken for young Cecil near the embassy, where he might share the Ambassador’s table. The youth, he thought, should be “taught to ride, play the lute, dance, play tennis, and use such exercises as are noted ornaments of courtiers.”[158] A subsequent recommendation of Thomas Windebank, the young man’s governor, to the effect that it would be well to accept Throgmorton’s offer, although Sir William Cecil was loth to trespass on his friend’s hospitality, in order that the youth “might learn to behave himself, not only at table, but otherwise, according to his estate,”[159] leads us to the conclusion that Thomas Cecil had thitherto not been an apt scholar. Some of the details of Thomas’s journey are curious. In addition to Windebank he was accompanied by two servants, and three geldings, which, Throgmorton thought, might as well be sold, as he could obtain others in Paris. The lodgings in Paris for the party and horses would cost about ten sun-crowns a month, and in addition to the money they brought they should have a letter of credit for three hundred crowns. Young Thomas had been to France before by way of Calais,[160] and on this occasion, that he might see fresh country, he went by Rye, Dieppe, and Rouen; and the intention was that he should stay in or near Paris for a year, and then proceed to Italy. Windebank appears to have been unequal to his task, and to have had no control over Thomas. In vain Sir William pressed both his son and Windebank to send him an account of their expenses, and from the first it is seen that the father was misgiving and anxious. Cecil was a reserved man, full of public affairs; but this correspondence[161] proves that he was also a man of deep family affection, and, above all, that he regarded with horror the idea that any scandal should attach to his honoured name. In his first letter to his son, 14th July 1561, after the arrival of the latter in Paris, he strikes the note of distrust. “He wishes him God’s blessing, but how he inclines himself to deserve it he knows not.” None of his son’s three letters, he complains, makes any mention of the expense he is incurring. He urges him at once to begin to translate French; and then says, “Fare ye well. Write every time somewhat to my wife.” To Windebank the anxious father is more outspoken. How are they spending their time, he asks, and heartily prays that Thomas may serve God with fear and reverence. But Thomas seems to have done nothing of the sort; for, in nearly every letter, Windebank urges Sir William to repeat his injunctions about prayer to his son. But the scapegrace paid little heed.
As soon as they arrived in Paris, Thomas sold his horse for forty crowns, and kept the money for his own spending. Throgmorton was soon tired of him, and advised that he should be sent to Orleans or elsewhere, away from the heat and distractions of Paris; but Thomas was well satisfied where he was. “Of study there is little or nothing yet,” he coolly writes to his father, after he had been in Paris for a month. They were still sight-seeing, and he grows almost eloquent in his description of a fight he had seen at court between a lion and three dogs, in which the latter were victorious. They lodged in the house of a gentleman, “a courtier and learned, but of indifferent good religion,” to whom they paid three hundred crowns a month for board and lodging; but this was not by any means all the expense. The heir spent £20 for his winter clothes; he must have a fashionable footcloth for his riding nag. The horses, too, were expensive, and Sir William complained. All gentlemen of estimation here ride, writes Windebank, and if he follow not the manner of the country, he will be less considered: “if all gentlemen ride, it is not meet for Mr. Thomas to go afoot.”
The father was accompanying the Queen during the autumn on her progress through Essex, and writes from various country-houses to his son and Windebank, begging the former to study, to pray, to avoid ill company, to take heed of surfeits, late suppers, prodigality, and the like; but apparently to no effect. Thomas wrote rarely and badly, his French did not improve, and he still failed to write to his learned step-mother, greatly to his father’s anger. At length he fell seriously ill, and promised amendment, which for a time seemed hopeful.
Through all the father’s anxiety his master passions for books, heraldry, and gardening are discernible, as well as his pride of race. He constantly orders Windebank to send him stated books, and to keep on the look-out for new plants, or good gardeners, that may be sent to England. In September he requests that some booksellers’ catalogues may be forwarded, that he may select some books to “garnish” his library. He was anxious that his son should study the genealogy and alliances of noble French families, and prays that a herald may be engaged to instruct him. But Thomas soon relapsed, and rumour of his ill-behaviour reached Sir William, not at first from Windebank. In March 1562 an angry and indignant letter went from Cecil to his son, reproaching him for his bad conduct. There was no amendment, he said, and all who came from Paris gave him the character of “a dissolute, slothful, negligent, and careless young man,” and the letter is signed, “Your father of an unworthy son.” A week later, 2nd April, Cecil wrote a characteristic and affecting letter to Windebank, which deserves to be quoted nearly in full, for it shows us the man more clearly than reams of State papers. “Windebank,” it runs, “I am here used to pains and troubles, but none creep so near my heart as doth this of my lewd son. I am perplexed what to think. The shame that I shall receive to have so unruled a son grieveth me more than if I had lost him in honest death. Good Windebank, consult my dear friend Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, to whom I have referred the whole. I could be best content that he would commit him secretly to some sharp prison. If this shall not seem good, yet would I rather have him sent away to Strasburg if possible, or to Lorraine, for my grief will grow double to see him before some sort of amends. If none of these will serve, then bring him home and I shall receive that which it pleaseth God to lay on my shoulders; that is, in the midst of my business, for comfort a daily torment. If ye shall come home with him, to cover the shame, let it appear to be by reason of the troubles there.[162] I rather desire to have this summer spent, though it were but to be absent from my sight. I am so troubled as well, what to write I know not.”
Windebank had been protesting for some time his own unfitness—which was obvious—and sending hints of the ill-conduct of his charge, who had borrowed money on the credit of others, and scandalised his friends by his dissoluteness; but at last the long-suffering tutor rebelled, and wrote, 26th April, to Cecil, “I have forborne to write plainly, but now I am clean out of hope, and am forced to do so. Sir, I see that Mr. Thomas has utterly no mind nor disposition to apply to any learning; being carried away by other affections that rule him, so that it maketh him forget his duty in all things;” and with this Windebank resigns his charge, for Thomas had openly defied him; advocates his immediate recall if the war in France will allow him to come, or otherwise that he should be sent to Flanders. But Windebank himself had had enough of Thomas Cecil, and refused to accompany him further.
This instructive correspondence helps us to see that, beyond even his wounded paternal affection, Sir William Cecil’s deepest feeling was sensitiveness to the opinion of the world about him. That his son should be unworthy touched him to the quick; but that the world should see any shame or reproach resting upon the heir of his house and name, was unendurable agony to one whose main social aims were to trace an ancient ancestry and head a noble posterity.