The Baron Burghley's Lifelong Struggle, Home Remedies and Quack Cures.

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?

We have seen in the previous letter from Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, to William Cecil, October 15, 1563, that Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's First Secretary, was already experiencing the illness that would harry him all the rest of his life. The more common manifestation, though, was neuropathy in his legs rather than a pain in the middle of his back. As the years went by, the neuropathy also manifested in his hands.

He was not alone in his suffering. A great many people in the world were experiencing the same symptoms. Those in England would likely have been diagnosed with gout. The progress of medicine being limited and uneven, this diagnosis was applied to a range of maladies. If pain was present in the big toe, it was pronounced to be gout regardless of other often more pronounced symptoms. As the symptoms progressed, the diagnosis might be further specified as intestinal gout due to digestive issues and diarrhea.

Even so educated a patient as Cecil would not likely have recognized what else was a symptom. He would not tend to commiserate over what he was experiencing. But because Cecil is a towering historical figure, and, in particular, because he kept a precise diary through his adult life, such diary entries as the following from 1566 survive.

“May 6. I was sore sick at Greenwich;” and, “November 29. I was first grieved with the gout, in the Parliament time at Westminster, and hardly used, by means of Justice Browne, as the Earl of Sussex can tell.”¹

He clearly did not realize that the pain in his back, mentioned some 3 years earlier, was a symptom of his so-called “intestinal gout”. He feels that he first experienced an attack of the gout in November of 1566.

By February of 1571 we learn that the neuropathy has resoundingly extended to Cecil's hands. He must dictate a letter, he informs Walsingham, because it is too painful to write it himself.

If my sickness alone were considered, or my irksome business laid thereto perused, I cannot think but you would excuse my not writing with my own hand, or any long letter by my enditing of the hand of another; and therefore now I am enforced for that little I have to say, to use another hand. You shall perceive by the Queen's Majesty's letters, what I have been inforced with some pain to indite, by reason of my restless sickness and business...²

He has felt it essential to take the Queen's dictation for her letters to Walsingham and other major players ⸻ ambassadors, agents, foreign monarchs and nobility, etc. ⸻ regardless. It was painful but it was his duty. It also made sure that he was aware of all that passed among those players. He made it a point to always be the most knowledgeable person in the room.

Cecil's biographer, Edward Nares, fills in some details from the more personal passages from the secretary's letters.

How early in life the disease attacked Lord Burghley does not appear; but a Mr. Dyon writes to him with a course of physic and diet as early as Jan. 24, 1573, the outside of which is marked in Lord Burghley's hand, Recipe pro podagra³. The Lady Harrington sent his Lordship some other directions, Feb. 4, 1573. We have an Italian letter to him concerning a powder for the gout, dated Dec. 12, 1575. In 1579, a prescription was sent to his Lordship in Latin, by Dr. Henry Landwer, to ease his gout by medicated slippers: previous to which, a variety of remedies had been sent to him in Latin by Dr. Hector, selected from the works of Averroes, Johannes Anglicus, and Mattheus Gradensis. In 1583, another Latin letter came from one Nicholas Gybberd, who pretended he had found a tincture of gold to cure the gout: and in 1584, an Italian letter with a pressing offer of cure of another kind, from one Signor Camillo Cardoini.

In 1592, one Henry Bossevyle wrote (as above) from Calais, offering for a few hundred pounds and a piece of preferment to furnish his Lordship with some plaisters, which, from the description, it might strongly be feared would have proved more painful to the patient than the gout itself. Lastly, the Earl of Shrewsbury, begged his Lordship, in 1593, to make trial of the oil of stag's blood, which he said, with a rare and great virtue, had been serviceable to himself.⁴

All of the above suggestions were made to Cecil as the Baron Burghley and the Lord High Treasurer. The queen had created the barony for him in 1571 and the new office in 1572. He was aging, his disease was progressing and word was getting around.

Shortly after he died, an anonymous servant of Burghley would write perhaps the most human biography of the man. While these amateur remedies and wishes for improvement were sprinkled among various business correspondence the baron was refusing to give in.

And when he was in never so great paine, or sicklye, if he co[u]ld but be carried abroad, he wo[u]ld goe to dispatch busyness, though it [were] with never so greate paine or daunger.⁵

If he was unable to walk at a given time he arranged to be carried. The Royal Court moving with regularity from one palace to another, the means of his carriage was likely a horse-drawn cart. On his estate called Theobalds it was famously a humble mule.

He received special license from the Queen.

‘the queen reflected her favour highly upon him; counting him both her treaſurer, & her principall treaſure. She would cause him always to fit down in her preſence, because troubled with the gout; & used to tell him, “My Lord, we make much of you, not for your bad legs, but for your good head.”⁶

In spite of his illness, he was far-and-away the most functional member of the government. He was simply too valuable to do without. Accommodation had to be made.

1   Nares, Edward. Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1830). II.413.

2   Digges, Dudley. The Compleat Ambassador (1655). 44. William Cecil to Francis Walsingham, February 1571 (N.S.)

3   Podagra] gout, esp. affecting the big toe.

4    Nares, III.23-4

5   Peck, Francis. Desiderata Curiosa (1779). I.15.

6   Peck, I.17. Citing Fuller's Holy State, p. 257.

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