Created earl of Exeter by James I., the second Lord Burghley was more soldier than statesman, and from his death to the present day the elder line of the Cecils has taken small part in public affairs. William Cecil, 2nd earl of Exeter, took as his first wife the Lady Roos, daughter and heir of the 3rd earl of Rutland of the Manners family. The son of this marriage inherited the barony of Roos as heir general, and died as a Roman Catholic at Naples in 1618 leaving no issue. A third son of the 1st earl was Edward Cecil, a somewhat incompetent military commander, created in 1625 Lord Cecil of Putney and Viscount Wimbledon, titles that died with him in 1638, although he was thrice married. In 1801 a marquessate was given to the 10th earl of Exeter, the story of whose marriage with Sarah Hoggins, daughter of a Shropshire husbandman, has been refined by Tennyson into the romance of “The Lord of Burleigh.” This elder line is still seated at Burghley, the great mansion built by their ancestor, the first lord.
The younger or Hatfield line was founded by Robert Cecil, the only surviving son of the great Burghley’s second marriage. As a secretary of state he followed in his father’s steps, and on the death of Elizabeth he may be said to have secured the accession of King James, who created him Lord Cecil of Essendine (1603), Viscount Cranborne (1604), and earl of Salisbury (1605). Forced by the king to exchange his house of Theobalds for Hatfield, he died in 1612, worn out with incessant labour, before he could inhabit the house which he built upon his new Hertfordshire estate. Of Burghley and his son Salisbury, “great ministers of state in the eyes of Christendom,” Clarendon writes that “their wisdom and virtues died with them.” The 2nd earl of Salisbury, “a man of no words, except in hunting and hawking,” was at first remarked for his obsequiousness to the court party, but taking no part in the Civil War came at last to sit in the Protector’s parliament. After the Restoration, Pepys saw him, old and discredited, at Hatfield, and notes him as “my simple Lord Salisbury.” The 7th earl was created marquess of Salisbury in 1789.
Hatfield House, a great Jacobean mansion which has suffered much from restoration and rebuilding, contains in its library the famous series of state papers which passed through the hands of Burghley and his son Salisbury, invaluable sources for the history of their period.
(O. Ba.)
CECILIA, SAINT, in the Catholic Church the patron saint of music and of the blind. Her festival falls on the 22nd of November. It was long supposed that she was a noble lady of Rome who, with her husband and other friends whom she had converted, suffered martyrdom, c. 230, under the emperor Alexander Severus. The researches of de Rossi, however (Rom. sott. ii. 147), go to confirm the statement of Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers (d. 600), that she perished in Sicily under Marcus Aurelius between 176 and 180. A church in her honour existed in Rome from about the 4th century, and was rebuilt with much splendour by Pope Paschal I. about the year 820, and again by Cardinal Sfondrati in 1599. It is situated in the Trastevere near the Ripa Grande quay, where in earlier days the Ghetto was located, and gives a “title” to a cardinal priest. Cecilia, whose musical fame rests on a passing notice in her legend that she praised God by instrumental as well as vocal music, has inspired many a masterpiece in art, including the Raphael at Bologna, the Rubens in Berlin, the Domenichino in Paris, and in literature, where she is commemorated especially by Chaucer’s “Seconde Nonnes Tale,” and by Dryden’s famous ode, set to music by Handel in 1736, and later by Sir Hubert Parry (1889).
Another St Cecilia, who suffered in Africa in the persecution of Diocletian (303-304), is commemorated on the 11th of February.
See U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources historiques (1905), i. 826 f.
CECROPIA, in botany, a genus of trees (natural order Moraceae), native of tropical America. They are of very rapid growth, affording a light wood used for making floats. C. peltata is the trumpet tree, so-called from the use made of its hollow stems by the Uaupé Indians as a musical instrument. It is a tree reaching about 50 ft. in height with a large spreading head, and deeply lobed leaves 12 in. or more in diameter. The hollows of the stem and branches are inhabited by ants, which in return for the shelter thus afforded, and food in the form of succulent growths on the base of the leaf-stalks, repel the attacks of leaf-cutting ants which would otherwise strip the tree of its leaves. This is an instance of “myrmecophily,” i.e. a living together for mutual benefit of the ants and the plant.