A Brief Bio of William Cecil Until his Creation as Baron of Burghley.

In this Series:

• A Brief Bio of William Cecil Until his Creation as Baron of Burghley.
• The Baron Burghley's Lifelong Struggle, Home Remedies and Quack Cures.
• The Decline of William Cecil, Baron of Burghley.
• What caused the death of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, in 1598?

William Cecil, the Baron of Burghley, was born to Richard Cecil, Groom of the Robes to King Henry VIII, and Jane Heckington, in Lincolnshire, on September 13, 1520.¹ Where exactly in Lincolnshire is not known with certainty. He was the couple's eldest child and only son. They also had three daughters who lived to adulthood and married well.

William attended grammar-school successively at Grantham and Stamford. He began to attend St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1535, at 15 years of age, where he is said to have delivered lectures in philosophy, at 16, and Greek, at 19. He did not, however, take a degree before he left to enter Gray's Inn, on May 6, 1541.²

Shortly after entering Gray's Inn, William went to the Royal Court to visit his father. While he waited, he fell into debate with two Irish Catholic clerics attending upon the great Irish chieftain O'Neal and thoroughly bested them. The king heard of the matter and sent for him. After conversing with young Cecil himself, he granted him the reversion to the custos brevium office in the Common Pleas. While it was not a present office, it was a clear sign that Henry had been impressed.

In August of the same year, he married Mary Cheke, the sister of his friend, Sir John Cheke, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. The couple had a son, Thomas, on May 5, 1542. Mary died the following February. Her brother was drafted, soon after, to be a tutor to young Prince Edward. William's connections to the most powerful men in the realm were steadily increasing.

Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gyddes Hall, in Essex was supervising the prince's education at the time. Cecil further ensconced himself in Court circles by marrying Sir Anthony's daughter, Mildred, on December 21, 1545. Cooke had five daughters, all of whom knew classical Greek, as well as Latin, and all but the youngest of whom married exceptionally well.

At the time of the marriage, William Cecil was no great catch but rather up-and-coming. Sir Anthony must have been an exceptional judge of character for the comparatively humble husband accepted for Mildred would turn out to be the finest catch of all.

William seems to have impressed the Earl of Hertford particularly. Upon the king's death, in 1547, the earl became the new Lord Protector, and created himself the Duke of Somerset. He made Cecil his Master of Requests. Being in the duke's service, he traveled with him to Musselburgh Field. There, during the Battle of Pinkie, the tale goes, he would have been killed if a fellow soldier hadn't pushed him out of the way of a canon shot. Instead the ball took off the arm the fellow soldier used to push him clear of the danger.

William was appointed secretary to the Lord Protector in September of 1548. A year later, The Duke of Somerset lost a power struggle with the young king's other councilors and was imprisoned. His secretary shared his fate. Both were eventually released. There would seem to be no record regarding whether he retained his office as secretary but William was made the young King Edward's Secretary of State on September 6, 1550.³

The young king died on July 6, 1553. The catholic Princess Mary was proclaimed queen 14 days later. After obeying an order to accompany the catholic Cardinal Pole to London, William did his best, surely, to be invisible. Eventually he was offered an opportunity to participate in the government if he would convert. This he refused while pledging his full loyalty to the queen. He did, however, accept a seat for Lincoln in Parliament in hopes of doing what little was possible for the protestant cause. He also began secretly advising the Princess Elizabeth in hopes of seeing her live to be queen in her turn.

And become queen she did. Some five stressful years later. She named William Cecil her Principal Secretary and the first member of her Privy Council. She could not have made a better choice.

Throughout these years there had been myriads of challenging tasks Cecil was called upon to accomplish. There would now be myriads more challenging still and he would perform his duties more effectively for the difficulties he had learned to overcome.

Now that he held the highest administrative post in the country, he knew his mind. The Cardinal John Morton, chancellor to the first Tudor king, Henry VII, had shown the way to subdue the nobility and build institutions by which to govern rather than personalities.

Henry VIII next largely chose to return to medieval models. Brooked in his desires, he chose to sweep impediments aside. His one inadvertent modernization — dismantling the power structure of the catholic church in England — was done haphazardly. The attempt of Edward VI's administration to build new foundations had fallen short for lack of time. Mary I's to return to the old suffered the same fate.

Under William Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, governing power resumed the long journey to become centralized. This had to be accomplished from the most inauspicious of beginnings. The treasury was empty and the country in debt. The coinage had been debased. Another civil war — this one based upon religion — was more likely than not.

The queen and her secretary would have to set matters in order while simultaneously building a modern government. Either task was overwhelming by itself. Fractious noblemen would have to be taught to help in the task or be brought to heel. They must be taught to wield the law before the sword. William would fill the offices of government with graduates of his beloved Gray's Inn and the other Inns of Chancery and of Court rather than clerics or immature blusterers trained at already outdated codes of chivalry and tactics of warfare.

But even his concept of government could not be fully modern in our sense. William could not choose to ignore his family's interests — could not ignore the facts of time and place. Among his effective tools, both toward centralizing government and advancing his family interests, was his office as Master of the Court of Wards.

Strangely, William Shakespeare took offense at the institution of Wards. He was by no means alone among the nobles of the realm who saw it crop their power and reduce their wealth. As I've pointed out, in my book Capulet, Capulet and Parolles,⁴ [link] Bertram, the protagonist of his play All's Well that Ends Well, objects to marrying Helena because she is a commoner. The king reminds him that he, as a royal ward, must marry whomever the king requires.

King. 'T is only title thou disdain'st in her, the which

I can build up.

The king replies that it need not be an impediment. He has the power to make her a noblewoman at will.

William Cecil wished to marry his daughter to the young Earl of Oxford, his royal ward. For all of his power, he was a commoner, making his daughter a commoner also. The queen created him Baron of Burghley on Shrove Sunday, February 25, 1570/1. The Earl of Oxford and his daughter — the noble daughter of a baron — were married the following December 16.

1   Nares, Edward. Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1828). 'At length, on examining more particularly the entries to be found in what is commonly called his Private Journal, we discovered, that in fact, he had mistaken the year of his own birth. That he had originally begun the Journal thus " a R. H. 8 13, 1521 13 Sept. Ego Gulielm' Cecill' nats sum apud Burne in Com. Lincolnj." Afterwards he discovered that he was, in fact, born in 1520; he therefore put this date above the date of 1521, added a 12. H. 8. erased the 13th of September in the former entry,...'

2    Nares, I.58. “his own MS. Diary, still preserved, supplies us with a more correct account. "Anno 1541, Maii vi. veni ad Grayes-In, cum essem natus annos xxi."

3   Nares. I.306. “When this happened, we learn from those words in the King's journal, 'Sept. 6, 1550, Mr. Wotton gave up his Secretaryship, and Mr. Cecil got it of him.'”

4   Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Capulet, Capulet and Parolles (2020). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LLDM91P

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• Edward de Vere Birthday Backgrounder: April 12 (2023). April 7, 2023. "Edward De Vere was born April 12th, in the year 1550, at Hedingham Castle, in Essex, to John De Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife Margery De Vere (née Golding)."

• Edward de Vere in the Lives of his Daughters. February 27, 2023. "At least they take some comfort from their belief that De Vere had no demonstrable relationship with his daughter, the Countess of Montgomery, Susan de Vere."

• Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc. July 13, 2021. “The name Ophelia was, by all indications, quite rare in the 16th century.”

• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”

• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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