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Lord Burghley #1
Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth
No loose pages. No underlining or Highlighting. Ex library with usual stamp marks and card holder inside back cover. SEE PHOTOS
510 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1955
About the author
Conyers Read
40 books3 followersConyers Read was an American historian who specialized in the History of England in the 15th and 16th centuries. A professor of history at the universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania, he was president of the American Historical Association for the year 1949–1950.
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June 17, 2024
What was there was amazing - five stars. But it only covered the first ten years of Elizabeth’s reign….there was so much more to their relationship that was just missing!
October 12, 2024
Conyers Read sets himself a pretty challenging standard in Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth : he writes of one of William Cecil’s earlier biographers, “But the great defect of Nares’s work is that it was composed with no knowledge at all of Spanish and French sources of information and with little more than a bowing acquaintance with the voluminous material in the Public Record Office, in the British Museum and in the unrivalled family archives of the Cecils at Hatfield House.” And of another, “Froude knew his sources as few historians since have known them and, if his judgement was not always sound and his bias often pronounced, his diligence in research and his brilliance in the presentation of his findings are beyond praise.” So he invites comparison with these predecessors.
Read’s work, first published in 1955, in conjunction with his Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth , (1960) is probably still the premier biography of a man who was one of the most important in Tudor England. It seems that the intervening seventy years have seen the uncovering of more documents than Read saw. Nevertheless, Read’s own locating and investigation of primary sources is thorough and there does not seem to be much new need for re-examination of Cecil’s part in the events covered by this first volume. It is pertinent, however, that there are many instances where there are virtually no first-hand documents written by Cecil, nor even documents clearly recording his point of view, statements or actions. Read expresses his frustration that there is “much about him on matters of little moment and little on matters of great moment.” “There are disappointingly few survivals of his spoken words. Undoubtedly he was a very facile speaker, both in parliament and in Council – witty and apt and convincing. But almost none of this survives, or only the bare skeleton of it. His great achievement was in his adroit management of his mistress. But just how he did it can only be guessed at.” (One takes it that Conyer here uses “facile” here not in its more common, derogatory sense but in a rarer Latinate sense which connotes positive assessment. One comes to recognize, also that he uses “mistress” as a reference to the queen and not to idle dalliances.
There is no doubt that Cecil was an absolutely crucial figure in Elizabeth I’s reign. Elizabeth herself ultimately acknowledged this and Read’s account shows it to be abundantly true. This, of itself, would not have been simple or easy, given the Queen’s vacillation over so many matters, her propensity then to repudiate her initial decision, and her delight in carrying on her own secret negotiations with active players of opposing sides. To maintain a trusted, and trusting, relationship with the monarch would have been complicated, but Cecil achieved it. And Read documents this.
Less straight-forward is the judgment about Cecil’s moral standing, and integrity, and I shall examine that later.
The book provides a valuable summary of Cecil’s family history, showing the rise from proletarian status, and through the turbulent Henrican years. Cecil comes into prominence during Edward VI’s regency years. At this stage, there was a debate between social reformers and wealthy land-owners over enclosures. The Lord Protector, that is to say the pre-eminent figure on the young Edward’s Regency Council, the Duke of Somerset, was anti-enclosures and was ultimately ousted by the majority group, the landowners. Cecil was his personal secretary and when Somerset was denounced, Cecil was briefly imprisoned in the Tower. Read makes the point that nothing indicates how Cecil felt about the issue so we do not know whether his imprisonment reflects support for Somerset or just guilt by association. However, he states that, “Cecil was not intolerant himself. But he swam with the tide and the tide was beginning to run strong against compromise and accommodation.”
It is curious that he writes of Cecil’s swimming with the tide and yet he commends the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth for choosing him as “among all the fawning servants around her, the one honest, competent man whom above all others she was to trust and to depend upon as long as he lived.… a most rare man…for sundry and singular gifts of nature, learning, wisdom and integrity.” Elizabeth makes him her Surveyor, that is manager of her estates which, at this time, might be seen as a risky connection for him, even though he later profited by it. Interestingly, he seems to have been very ready to attach himself to Warwick who led the putsch against Somerset and replaced him. Read states unequivocally that “Certainly Cecil neither then nor later was prepared to do battle for the poor against the gentry.” He adds “As for Cecil, he was no martyr to old loyalties. He was an administrator, a government official, he owed his office to Warwick, he perceived that Warwick commanded the situation and that Somerset’s program had little or no support”, and “I see no reason for censuring him on that account. There was nothing to be gained either for himself or his country or for his creed by any violent upheavals. And only a violent upheaval , a successful appeal to the masses against the classes, could have put Somerset where he wanted to be. Cecil was no Democrat, nobody who mattered in his time was. What he wanted was a peaceful and secure State.” He adds that, under Warwick, “He remained a competent servant, he never became, as he was to become under Elizabeth, a great minister.”
Interestingly, Warwick was subsequently a prime mover in seeking the installation of Lady Jane Grey as monarch after Edward VI’s death, an unsuccessful ploy which soon led to his execution. Cecil signed several documents endorsing these actions which Edward in his last days, ratified in contravention of Henry VIII’s Act of Succession; however Read accepts Cecil’s later claims that he did so with reluctance, and was making plans to leave the kingdom, if he avoided leaving life.
He then managed to convince Mary of his innocence when, with deft marshalling of her supporters, she destroyed Warwick’s plans and succeeded to the throne. One of the first pardons she granted was for Cecil. While he did not continue in his old role, he did retain some official roles and was prominently placed at Edward’s funeral. He was absent for several of Mary’s parliaments but then returned, Read commenting that Cecil probably judged that “return to the Roman Communion was inevitable and that he would do well to adjust himself to the situation. It was not an heroic decision but it was a characteristic one.” It should be said that Read’s account of all these machinations is clear and easy to read, and balanced, and supports his judgment of Cecil’s involvement. He notes that Cecil faced some criticism for fraternisation with Cardinal Pole, but then opposed a proposal to confiscate land from Protestant refugees who did not return. Throughout the book, Read insists that, while Cecil was a Protestant, with strongly puritanical leanings, in the political field his religion remained pragmatic and undoctrinaire.
Elizabeth was clearly a very difficult monarch for Cecil to act as her First Secretary. She prevaricated before making decisions, often changed the decision she had made, and frequently was carrying out her own private deals as, kept in the dark, he tried to achieve what he thought he had been charged to do. This happened time and time again during the negotiations over the whole tangled business of Scotland’s relations with France, as well as the tawdry marital activities and escape to England of Mary Queen of Scots, and her incarceration there. Elizabeth’s indecision then was replicated when it came to Mary’s ultimate fate.
In a book that is generally quite dry in tone – not that that is particularly of concern – one of the entertaining elements is the treatment of Cecil’s relationship with his first son, Thomas, the only child he had with his first wife. By the time we first encounter Thomas, he is nineteen years old and, being sent abroad for a year to be “civilly trained” and learn the rudiments of a language. William hoped that Thomas would not be burdened by arduous education, as he had been, making him sickly. He wrote out A Memorial for Thomas Cecil, my son, to peruse and put in use from time to time concerning divers things given to him in charge by me, Wm. Cecil, his father. Anno Domini 1561. Read quotes at length from the document which extensively instructs about prayer but also alludes to “surfeiting of eating and drinking too much” and “attending and minding any lewd or filthy tales or enticements”. Even from the excerpts Read provides, it is apparent that Polonius himself would have been embarrassed to write this.
And it is of no consequence anyway, since, as is so often the case with young adults suddenly experiencing freedom after growing up repressed, Thomas seems to find his way into all manner of disaster, never has enough money and begs, borrows and steals as a result. There is a faint sense of irony as William hears of his son’s misadventures. William will not have been the first parent who, upright himself, discovers that the upright genes did not pass on to the next generation. Mind you, Read points out that William himself was caught out in some “sharp practice” when trying to recover a loan he had made to a man who became bankrupt. Ultimately, William guided Thomas into an MP’s seat so his paternal feelings over-rode any lingering ethical qualms he might have had about Thomas’s integrity.
Read acknowledges the extent of Cecil’s responsibilities and, given his reputation for effective management, presumably his knowledge; he lists: matters of religion, especially the official position of the Church of England and the doings of Recusants and Catholic priests; the Welsh and Scottish borders; the Council of the North; all coast defences; all supplies of powder and munitions, and their location; all the ships of the Navy and their personnel; complete record of the last muster in every shire; customs, privileges of the Channel Islands; complete record of Irish affairs; corporations and companies in overseas trade; aliens within the realm; matters of the mint; matters of royal revenue; matters of the royal household and its supply; foreign relations.
Furthermore, he is said to have “provided the ways and means” of righting, discreetly, the nation’s badly debased currency.
Even so, Conyers Read does not, by any means, provide unalloyed praise: “Cecil was not a political genius; no great ideas emanated from his brain. But he was eminently a safe man, not an original thinker, but a counsellor of unrivalled wisdom. Caution was his supreme characteristic;” and “he was not the man to suffer for convictions. The interest of the state was the supreme consideration, and to it he had no hesitation in sacrificing individual consciences.”
There are several issues regarding which Read is critical of Cecil’s thinking. Perhaps the most significant relates to his protectionist trade policies whereby he wanted to discourage the people from purchasing overseas goods, especially luxury goods. He wanted the nation’s merchant fleet to be increased – mainly, it seems, as a backup for the navy – but hoped this would be achieved through an enlarged fishing fleet rather than through international trade. He had an interestingly puritanical view that people should not purchase luxury fashion beyond their social station: somewhat inconsistently, he saw it as acceptable for the aristocracy to buy and wear frippery, but unacceptable for the lower classes to emulate them.
Read argues that one of Cecil’s finest achievements was in managing the tangled situation in Scotland with increasing French influence, the religious complexities of Knox’s Protestantism versus Mary Stuart’s Catholicism, and the whole mess involving Mary herself, her various partners and alliances, and her own connections with France, and the rebels. And all of this with a backdrop of Elizabeth’s endless prevarication, her feeling that a monarch deserves fellow-monarchs’ support, and the ever-present danger that Catholic nations might undermine Protestant England. Although, as he also notes, Scotland was to continue to present difficulties for many years.
Amongst the odder features to this period of English history were the romantic lives of Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor. Henry Tudor had created havoc with his love-life. Elizabeth was not much less chaotic with hers, although the consequences were vastly less appalling. She was clearly titillated by the attention of her parade of suitors and seems to have gained as much pleasure from the uncertainty she sowed amongst suitors, parliament and Privy Council as she did from the relationships themselves. Read has Cecil deciding that expressing opposition to her possible marriage with Robert Dudley had the opposite effect, so a more subtle approach, querying whether the match would be popularly accepted, was a more effective strategy. Cecil was in a quandary since he fervently believed that a royal marriage and royal babies were important for the realm’s stability; however, that was the in-principle concept of a marriage and there was still the question of the suitability of any individual candidate.
At those times when Elizabeth was thinking beyond her prospective progeny for England’s succession, she favoured Mary Tudor but then Mary’s complicity in her husband’s death, her Catholicism and later her connection with Babington made this increasingly impossible.
It is tricky to come to an overall judgment about William Cecil after reading this work. This is not because of any failing in the work; in terms of his Preface’s criticisms of his predecessors’ studies, Conyers Read has been indefatigable in scrutinising the documentary record, and he seems very fair in his commentary.
It is more a matter of uncertainty over what criteria one should use to make a judgment. Cecil was unquestionably a great survivor, and on that basis, a clever operator. During the reigns of Edward and Mary, he managed to position himself in safety, even with the change to Mary’s Catholicism. Then, when Elizabeth took the throne, this Puritan-inclined Protestant made himself indispensable to her Catholic-inclined Protestantism.
Cecil was able to adjust to Elizabeth’s constant prevarications and procrastinations. It seems that he shared with her an aversion to bellicosity; when there were suggestions of invading Brittany and Normandy, “Cecil’s whole position in the matter is a strikingly modern one. He said nothing about traditional Anglo-French rivalries, nothing about Crecy and Agincourt and the lost empire in France, nothing about Calais, currently regarded as the great stain upon England’s honour. Strangely enough, he said nothing about the cause of Protestantism. He opposed permanent occupation of French territory. He opposed expensive and unprofitable wars overseas.” He similarly avoided nudging Elizabeth into commitment of troops to the Low Countries and, while he sought to reduce French influence in Scotland, he was wary of committing English troops.
One might see him as acting without any personal integrity or ethical consistency in his determination to bend to Elizabeth’s wishes. Read notes that he tended to be “against the trend of the time” in economic matters, such as the enclosure laws and in relation to trade and to land usage where he preferred traditional usage of animal husbandry over newer textile industries. And he was conservative on social issues. We should, of course, avoid viewing him through contemporary lenses and, if one reverts to the criterion of supporting Elizabeth, he presumably achieved his own goal. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to recognise that there was no intellectual, economic or social acuity in his thinking.
Elizabeth, in her personal erraticism, ostracised him brutally when seeking to avoid her personal responsibility for the ultimate fate of Mary Queen of Scots. But she relatively quickly rehabilitated him so she could again benefit from his advice. In operating so closely with the monarch, he inevitably acquired many enemies. Just about every foreign diplomat in London saw him as the source of their problems. And two English nobles, Norfolk and Arundel plotted with the Spanish ambassador to get rid of Cecil, planning to have him put in the Tower, and then to find a basis for charges. When the Queen found out, she squashed the whole scheme. Reflective of the fluid nature of the politics of the time, Cecil subsequently reconciled with Norfolk, with whom he had been very close during Scottish affairs.
It is quite difficult to establish a picture of just what sort of person William Cecil was. Read asserts that, after a victory against the Marians, he refrained from vindictiveness. But he suggests an element of his falling out with his brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was his dissatisfaction with Bacon’s inadequate gratitude for his patronage in Court. And there are his wildly differing relationships with his two sons and his daughter.
One of The problems with sorting him out as a man is the prolixity of his writing. It tends to be so discursive and so embellished that it is extremely difficult to follow. Part of this is typical of the times of course, but much of it is the consequence of his personal style of writing and speaking. Read even quotes a contemporary who complains that “you always write obscurely”. Certainly he does, perhaps partly as a deliberate means of protecting himself by making his meaning covert, but it also seems to be partly that he likes the embellishment.
All in all, then, one is left with little to admire in William Cecil, other than his success in surviving, that being achieved to a large extent by his ability to sublimate his own ideas and principles in order to pursue Elizabeth’s. Even then, Conyer Read’s final judgment is that Cecil over-emphasised the danger deriving from England’s Catholics: “The English Catholics would grumble and even plot. But they would not fight against the Queen. At the bottom most of them were better Englishman than they were Catholics./ Elizabeth perceived this even more clearly than her Secretary.”
William Cecil was a central figure in Elizabethan England, and this account of his life until his elevation to the peerage is extraordinarily thorough and impressively documented and balanced. As much as it is now eighty years old, it remains as good an account of this figure as one could seek.
Read’s work, first published in 1955, in conjunction with his Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth , (1960) is probably still the premier biography of a man who was one of the most important in Tudor England. It seems that the intervening seventy years have seen the uncovering of more documents than Read saw. Nevertheless, Read’s own locating and investigation of primary sources is thorough and there does not seem to be much new need for re-examination of Cecil’s part in the events covered by this first volume. It is pertinent, however, that there are many instances where there are virtually no first-hand documents written by Cecil, nor even documents clearly recording his point of view, statements or actions. Read expresses his frustration that there is “much about him on matters of little moment and little on matters of great moment.” “There are disappointingly few survivals of his spoken words. Undoubtedly he was a very facile speaker, both in parliament and in Council – witty and apt and convincing. But almost none of this survives, or only the bare skeleton of it. His great achievement was in his adroit management of his mistress. But just how he did it can only be guessed at.” (One takes it that Conyer here uses “facile” here not in its more common, derogatory sense but in a rarer Latinate sense which connotes positive assessment. One comes to recognize, also that he uses “mistress” as a reference to the queen and not to idle dalliances.
There is no doubt that Cecil was an absolutely crucial figure in Elizabeth I’s reign. Elizabeth herself ultimately acknowledged this and Read’s account shows it to be abundantly true. This, of itself, would not have been simple or easy, given the Queen’s vacillation over so many matters, her propensity then to repudiate her initial decision, and her delight in carrying on her own secret negotiations with active players of opposing sides. To maintain a trusted, and trusting, relationship with the monarch would have been complicated, but Cecil achieved it. And Read documents this.
Less straight-forward is the judgment about Cecil’s moral standing, and integrity, and I shall examine that later.
The book provides a valuable summary of Cecil’s family history, showing the rise from proletarian status, and through the turbulent Henrican years. Cecil comes into prominence during Edward VI’s regency years. At this stage, there was a debate between social reformers and wealthy land-owners over enclosures. The Lord Protector, that is to say the pre-eminent figure on the young Edward’s Regency Council, the Duke of Somerset, was anti-enclosures and was ultimately ousted by the majority group, the landowners. Cecil was his personal secretary and when Somerset was denounced, Cecil was briefly imprisoned in the Tower. Read makes the point that nothing indicates how Cecil felt about the issue so we do not know whether his imprisonment reflects support for Somerset or just guilt by association. However, he states that, “Cecil was not intolerant himself. But he swam with the tide and the tide was beginning to run strong against compromise and accommodation.”
It is curious that he writes of Cecil’s swimming with the tide and yet he commends the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth for choosing him as “among all the fawning servants around her, the one honest, competent man whom above all others she was to trust and to depend upon as long as he lived.… a most rare man…for sundry and singular gifts of nature, learning, wisdom and integrity.” Elizabeth makes him her Surveyor, that is manager of her estates which, at this time, might be seen as a risky connection for him, even though he later profited by it. Interestingly, he seems to have been very ready to attach himself to Warwick who led the putsch against Somerset and replaced him. Read states unequivocally that “Certainly Cecil neither then nor later was prepared to do battle for the poor against the gentry.” He adds “As for Cecil, he was no martyr to old loyalties. He was an administrator, a government official, he owed his office to Warwick, he perceived that Warwick commanded the situation and that Somerset’s program had little or no support”, and “I see no reason for censuring him on that account. There was nothing to be gained either for himself or his country or for his creed by any violent upheavals. And only a violent upheaval , a successful appeal to the masses against the classes, could have put Somerset where he wanted to be. Cecil was no Democrat, nobody who mattered in his time was. What he wanted was a peaceful and secure State.” He adds that, under Warwick, “He remained a competent servant, he never became, as he was to become under Elizabeth, a great minister.”
Interestingly, Warwick was subsequently a prime mover in seeking the installation of Lady Jane Grey as monarch after Edward VI’s death, an unsuccessful ploy which soon led to his execution. Cecil signed several documents endorsing these actions which Edward in his last days, ratified in contravention of Henry VIII’s Act of Succession; however Read accepts Cecil’s later claims that he did so with reluctance, and was making plans to leave the kingdom, if he avoided leaving life.
He then managed to convince Mary of his innocence when, with deft marshalling of her supporters, she destroyed Warwick’s plans and succeeded to the throne. One of the first pardons she granted was for Cecil. While he did not continue in his old role, he did retain some official roles and was prominently placed at Edward’s funeral. He was absent for several of Mary’s parliaments but then returned, Read commenting that Cecil probably judged that “return to the Roman Communion was inevitable and that he would do well to adjust himself to the situation. It was not an heroic decision but it was a characteristic one.” It should be said that Read’s account of all these machinations is clear and easy to read, and balanced, and supports his judgment of Cecil’s involvement. He notes that Cecil faced some criticism for fraternisation with Cardinal Pole, but then opposed a proposal to confiscate land from Protestant refugees who did not return. Throughout the book, Read insists that, while Cecil was a Protestant, with strongly puritanical leanings, in the political field his religion remained pragmatic and undoctrinaire.
Elizabeth was clearly a very difficult monarch for Cecil to act as her First Secretary. She prevaricated before making decisions, often changed the decision she had made, and frequently was carrying out her own private deals as, kept in the dark, he tried to achieve what he thought he had been charged to do. This happened time and time again during the negotiations over the whole tangled business of Scotland’s relations with France, as well as the tawdry marital activities and escape to England of Mary Queen of Scots, and her incarceration there. Elizabeth’s indecision then was replicated when it came to Mary’s ultimate fate.
In a book that is generally quite dry in tone – not that that is particularly of concern – one of the entertaining elements is the treatment of Cecil’s relationship with his first son, Thomas, the only child he had with his first wife. By the time we first encounter Thomas, he is nineteen years old and, being sent abroad for a year to be “civilly trained” and learn the rudiments of a language. William hoped that Thomas would not be burdened by arduous education, as he had been, making him sickly. He wrote out A Memorial for Thomas Cecil, my son, to peruse and put in use from time to time concerning divers things given to him in charge by me, Wm. Cecil, his father. Anno Domini 1561. Read quotes at length from the document which extensively instructs about prayer but also alludes to “surfeiting of eating and drinking too much” and “attending and minding any lewd or filthy tales or enticements”. Even from the excerpts Read provides, it is apparent that Polonius himself would have been embarrassed to write this.
And it is of no consequence anyway, since, as is so often the case with young adults suddenly experiencing freedom after growing up repressed, Thomas seems to find his way into all manner of disaster, never has enough money and begs, borrows and steals as a result. There is a faint sense of irony as William hears of his son’s misadventures. William will not have been the first parent who, upright himself, discovers that the upright genes did not pass on to the next generation. Mind you, Read points out that William himself was caught out in some “sharp practice” when trying to recover a loan he had made to a man who became bankrupt. Ultimately, William guided Thomas into an MP’s seat so his paternal feelings over-rode any lingering ethical qualms he might have had about Thomas’s integrity.
Read acknowledges the extent of Cecil’s responsibilities and, given his reputation for effective management, presumably his knowledge; he lists: matters of religion, especially the official position of the Church of England and the doings of Recusants and Catholic priests; the Welsh and Scottish borders; the Council of the North; all coast defences; all supplies of powder and munitions, and their location; all the ships of the Navy and their personnel; complete record of the last muster in every shire; customs, privileges of the Channel Islands; complete record of Irish affairs; corporations and companies in overseas trade; aliens within the realm; matters of the mint; matters of royal revenue; matters of the royal household and its supply; foreign relations.
Furthermore, he is said to have “provided the ways and means” of righting, discreetly, the nation’s badly debased currency.
Even so, Conyers Read does not, by any means, provide unalloyed praise: “Cecil was not a political genius; no great ideas emanated from his brain. But he was eminently a safe man, not an original thinker, but a counsellor of unrivalled wisdom. Caution was his supreme characteristic;” and “he was not the man to suffer for convictions. The interest of the state was the supreme consideration, and to it he had no hesitation in sacrificing individual consciences.”
There are several issues regarding which Read is critical of Cecil’s thinking. Perhaps the most significant relates to his protectionist trade policies whereby he wanted to discourage the people from purchasing overseas goods, especially luxury goods. He wanted the nation’s merchant fleet to be increased – mainly, it seems, as a backup for the navy – but hoped this would be achieved through an enlarged fishing fleet rather than through international trade. He had an interestingly puritanical view that people should not purchase luxury fashion beyond their social station: somewhat inconsistently, he saw it as acceptable for the aristocracy to buy and wear frippery, but unacceptable for the lower classes to emulate them.
Read argues that one of Cecil’s finest achievements was in managing the tangled situation in Scotland with increasing French influence, the religious complexities of Knox’s Protestantism versus Mary Stuart’s Catholicism, and the whole mess involving Mary herself, her various partners and alliances, and her own connections with France, and the rebels. And all of this with a backdrop of Elizabeth’s endless prevarication, her feeling that a monarch deserves fellow-monarchs’ support, and the ever-present danger that Catholic nations might undermine Protestant England. Although, as he also notes, Scotland was to continue to present difficulties for many years.
Amongst the odder features to this period of English history were the romantic lives of Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor. Henry Tudor had created havoc with his love-life. Elizabeth was not much less chaotic with hers, although the consequences were vastly less appalling. She was clearly titillated by the attention of her parade of suitors and seems to have gained as much pleasure from the uncertainty she sowed amongst suitors, parliament and Privy Council as she did from the relationships themselves. Read has Cecil deciding that expressing opposition to her possible marriage with Robert Dudley had the opposite effect, so a more subtle approach, querying whether the match would be popularly accepted, was a more effective strategy. Cecil was in a quandary since he fervently believed that a royal marriage and royal babies were important for the realm’s stability; however, that was the in-principle concept of a marriage and there was still the question of the suitability of any individual candidate.
At those times when Elizabeth was thinking beyond her prospective progeny for England’s succession, she favoured Mary Tudor but then Mary’s complicity in her husband’s death, her Catholicism and later her connection with Babington made this increasingly impossible.
It is tricky to come to an overall judgment about William Cecil after reading this work. This is not because of any failing in the work; in terms of his Preface’s criticisms of his predecessors’ studies, Conyers Read has been indefatigable in scrutinising the documentary record, and he seems very fair in his commentary.
It is more a matter of uncertainty over what criteria one should use to make a judgment. Cecil was unquestionably a great survivor, and on that basis, a clever operator. During the reigns of Edward and Mary, he managed to position himself in safety, even with the change to Mary’s Catholicism. Then, when Elizabeth took the throne, this Puritan-inclined Protestant made himself indispensable to her Catholic-inclined Protestantism.
Cecil was able to adjust to Elizabeth’s constant prevarications and procrastinations. It seems that he shared with her an aversion to bellicosity; when there were suggestions of invading Brittany and Normandy, “Cecil’s whole position in the matter is a strikingly modern one. He said nothing about traditional Anglo-French rivalries, nothing about Crecy and Agincourt and the lost empire in France, nothing about Calais, currently regarded as the great stain upon England’s honour. Strangely enough, he said nothing about the cause of Protestantism. He opposed permanent occupation of French territory. He opposed expensive and unprofitable wars overseas.” He similarly avoided nudging Elizabeth into commitment of troops to the Low Countries and, while he sought to reduce French influence in Scotland, he was wary of committing English troops.
One might see him as acting without any personal integrity or ethical consistency in his determination to bend to Elizabeth’s wishes. Read notes that he tended to be “against the trend of the time” in economic matters, such as the enclosure laws and in relation to trade and to land usage where he preferred traditional usage of animal husbandry over newer textile industries. And he was conservative on social issues. We should, of course, avoid viewing him through contemporary lenses and, if one reverts to the criterion of supporting Elizabeth, he presumably achieved his own goal. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to recognise that there was no intellectual, economic or social acuity in his thinking.
Elizabeth, in her personal erraticism, ostracised him brutally when seeking to avoid her personal responsibility for the ultimate fate of Mary Queen of Scots. But she relatively quickly rehabilitated him so she could again benefit from his advice. In operating so closely with the monarch, he inevitably acquired many enemies. Just about every foreign diplomat in London saw him as the source of their problems. And two English nobles, Norfolk and Arundel plotted with the Spanish ambassador to get rid of Cecil, planning to have him put in the Tower, and then to find a basis for charges. When the Queen found out, she squashed the whole scheme. Reflective of the fluid nature of the politics of the time, Cecil subsequently reconciled with Norfolk, with whom he had been very close during Scottish affairs.
It is quite difficult to establish a picture of just what sort of person William Cecil was. Read asserts that, after a victory against the Marians, he refrained from vindictiveness. But he suggests an element of his falling out with his brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was his dissatisfaction with Bacon’s inadequate gratitude for his patronage in Court. And there are his wildly differing relationships with his two sons and his daughter.
One of The problems with sorting him out as a man is the prolixity of his writing. It tends to be so discursive and so embellished that it is extremely difficult to follow. Part of this is typical of the times of course, but much of it is the consequence of his personal style of writing and speaking. Read even quotes a contemporary who complains that “you always write obscurely”. Certainly he does, perhaps partly as a deliberate means of protecting himself by making his meaning covert, but it also seems to be partly that he likes the embellishment.
All in all, then, one is left with little to admire in William Cecil, other than his success in surviving, that being achieved to a large extent by his ability to sublimate his own ideas and principles in order to pursue Elizabeth’s. Even then, Conyer Read’s final judgment is that Cecil over-emphasised the danger deriving from England’s Catholics: “The English Catholics would grumble and even plot. But they would not fight against the Queen. At the bottom most of them were better Englishman than they were Catholics./ Elizabeth perceived this even more clearly than her Secretary.”
William Cecil was a central figure in Elizabethan England, and this account of his life until his elevation to the peerage is extraordinarily thorough and impressively documented and balanced. As much as it is now eighty years old, it remains as good an account of this figure as one could seek.
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