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]