First Earl of Salisbury

English earl, statesman, and diplomat

• Born: June 1, 1563
• Birthplace: Westminster, England
• Died: May 24, 1612
• Place of death: Marlborough, Wiltshire, England

As the principal secretary to both Queen Elizabeth and King James I, the first earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil, managed Parliament, supervised the peaceful transition from Tudor to Stuart rule, and negotiated a peace treaty with Spain.

Early Life

Robert Cecil (SEE-sihl) was the second son born to Queen Elizabeth’s lord treasurer, William Cecil (the later Lord Burghley), by his second wife, Mildred, the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. A frail child, Cecil grew up with a twisted foot, a bent back, a short stature, and a keen mind. His education was closely supervised by his father, who recognized in his younger son qualities lacking in his heir, Thomas. He provided Robert with a number of fine tutors who cultivated in him the skills needed for a career in public life. The young Cecil won a degree of affection and support from his parents that they never gave to his older brother, and his father took time to teach Robert some of the valuable political skills and lessons he had learned at court.

Robert Cecil’s formal education is not well recorded. He entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1579 or 1580, several years later in life than did most of his contemporaries. In 1580, he was among those “specially admitted” to study law at Gray’s Inn, London, though he seems to have returned to Cambridge later that fall. In 1580, he sat in Parliament (the third session of 1576) through his father’s patronage. He continued his studies, and in 1581, Vice Chancellor Perne wrote to his father and commended Cecil for his piety, diligence, and industry. Cecil appeared to have learned the importance of hard work, prudence, and caution and to have gained a mastery of foreign languages, which served him well throughout his career. Despite his success as an undergraduate, Cecil was prepared for a career in public life and sent abroad to expand his education.

After the parliamentary session of 1584, Cecil traveled to France, where he spent the greater part of the next two years, returning in 1586 to represent Westminster as he had in 1584. While on the Continent, Cecil accompanied Lord Derby’s mission to the Netherlands to negotiate peace terms with the Spanish. He was chosen for several tasks because of his excellent facility with foreign languages as well as his growing reputation for handling matters with tact and prudence.

Cecil returned to England before the victory over the Spanish Armada, and he may have been employed by Queen Elizabeth to write a pamphlet in her defense. He was elected to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Hertford in the February, 1589, session and was appointed high sheriff of the county later in that year.

On August 31, 1589, four months after his mother’s death, Cecil married Elizabeth Brook, the daughter of Lord Cobbam. She died on January 24, 1596, from complications delivering her third child, Catherine, having provided Cecil with an heir, William, and another daughter, Frances.

Life’s Work

In the aftermath of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, as the rivalry between the factions led by Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and Lord Burghley intensified, Cecil began to gain influence and experience at court. After the death of Secretary Walsingham in 1590, Burghley convinced Elizabeth IIII25IIII to allow him to assume the duties of the secretary’s office, which he then delegated to his son Cecil. On May 20, 1591, while Elizabeth was visiting Burghley at Theobalds, Burghley was made chief secretary and Cecil was knighted. Three months later, Cecil was made a member of the Privy Council, but he was not made secretary until July, 1596, though he increasingly exercised the duties of the office as a result of his father’s declining health.

As a member of the council, Cecil helped to convict Sir John Perrot, sat in the parliaments of 1592, 1597, and 1601, and served the queen in a variety of ways. In 1593, he became the functional leader of the Crown’s supporters in the Commons, with little prior speaking experience. Despite some initial difficulties, Cecil quickly learned to manage the government’s business with great effectiveness. In one session, he secured a large bounty for the queen and assistance for the poor despite a severe economic depression.

As he worked to gain the trust and confidence of the queen, Cecil experienced a period of personal and political difficulties. His wife’s death in 1596 left him depressed, gray-haired, and heavily burdened. Despite his wife’s advice to remarry, Cecil remained a widower and devoted himself to the service of his royal mistress to a degree that left little room for shared affections. Cecil’s isolation increased when his cousins, Francis and Anthony Bacon, joined his rival, Essex, and even further intensified with the death of his father in July, 1698, shortly after Cecil’s return from a diplomatic mission to France.

While Thomas received his father’s title and the bulk of his estate, Robert received Theobalds, land in Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and a network of political associates who had served his father. In 1608, Cecil exchanged Theobalds with King James VI of Scotland and received Hatfield House, which still survives as one of the better examples of early Stuart interior decoration. He also succeeded his father as master of the Court of Wards, a lucrative position that he supervised with unusual skillfulness.

In the final years of the queen’s reign, Cecil replaced his father as one of the queen’s most trusted councillors. His sagacity, prudence, and leadership were severely tested by the political difficulties in Parliament, the troubles in Ireland, Essex’s rebellion, and the misadventures of Sir Walter Ralegh. Through all these difficult trials, conspiracies, and rivalries, Cecil effectively safeguarded the Crown’s interests and his own. He skillfully defended himself against Essex’s slanders, maintained his control of the machinery of government, and kept the esteem of the queen, who called him her little “elf.”

Only after Essex’s execution did Cecil initiate a secret correspondence with King James VI of Scotland that helped James gain Elizabeth’s favor and Privy Council support for his ascension to the English throne after Elizabeth’s death on March 24, 1603. Cecil dispelled the doubts that his rivals had planted and gained James’s confidence by his good advice, which spared Elizabeth from embarrassment and allowed James to ascend the throne unopposed.

In appreciation for Cecil’s management of the peaceful transition, King James I of England kept Cecil as his principal secretary of state. The government discovered a conspiracy led by Henry, Lord Cobbam, his brother George, and Sir Walter Ralegh, in 1603, known as the Bye and Main Plots. As a reward for his efficacious handling of the conspirators, Cecil was made lord of Essendine, Rutland, on May 13, 1603. In October, he was appointed lord high steward to Queen Anne, whose interests he also supervised with notable success.

After negotiating a peace with Spain in 1604, Cecil was made Viscount Cranborne in August of that year, and on May 4, 1605, he was elevated to become the first earl of Salisbury. A year later, he was made a knight of the Garter after becoming lord-lieutenant of Hertfordshire. On May 6, 1608, after the death of Thomas, earl of Dorset, Cecil became lord treasurer, an office once held by his father.

Cecil served King James I with the same devotion and sagacity with which he had served Queen Elizabeth I. He urged moderation in the treatment of Puritan ministers and supported conciliation efforts that resulted in the Hampton Court Conference and the King James version of the Bible, published in 1611. He supervised a series of negotiations with France and played a small role in the diplomacy that ended hostilities in the Netherlands in 1609.

While King James poked fun at his “little beagle” who labored at home while all the good hounds were at the hunt, the king recognized Cecil’s immense talents and left most domestic and foreign affairs in his capable hands. From his seat in the House of Lords, James had difficulties managing business in the House of Commons.

Cecil was able to frustrate Puritan initiatives in all five sessions of James’s first Parliament, secure new tax revenues, and guide the government through the dangerous Gunpowder plot of 1605, without allowing it to become an anti-Catholic crusade. The event is celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day, a holiday named after the chief conspirator in this plot to kill the king and destroy Parliament.

Cecil expanded tariff revenues with the imposition of a new book of rates in 1608, despite parliamentary opposition, which had earlier defeated his effort to unify England and Scotland. In the fourth session, Cecil worked diligently to stabilize and restructure royal finances by negotiating the Great Contract of 1610. While royal extravagance, the king’s unwillingness to compromise, and the suspicions of the Commons combined to frustrate the negotiations in the fall of 1610, Cecil’s long hours of hard work and dedicated service took their toll on his frail constitution. Despite Cecil’s increasing medical problems and the king’s disappointment with the failure of the Great Contract, James continued to grant favors to Cecil’s friends and solicit Cecil’s advice on all major government business in the following two years.

Cecil not only supervised the administration of government in England but also was chiefly responsible for supervising Scottish affairs from London. If James ruled Scotland “by pen,” as one historian asserts, then it is clear that the penmanship was Cecil’s. Despite his strong efforts and the work of a commission to settle disputes, Cecil was not able to secure passage in Parliament of an Act of Union to unite James’s two kingdoms. Given their long history of animosity, Cecil wisely abandoned the project as harmony existed without it.

The unsuccessful effort to unite the two realms, the rise of a royal favorite, Robert Carr, and the failure of the Great Contract were events that, to some degree, worked to limit Cecil’s effectiveness. As he became ill and weary in the last years of his life, it seemed to some that he lost political control and royal favor after 1610. Scholarship has shown that he maintained his influence, the support of the king, and his ability to aid office seekers, including Carr. He was given new honors in August, 1611, and all the members of the royal family visited him when he suffered his final illness, a stomach tumor.

Significance

Cecil was an immensely hardworking politician and statesman who successfully served two monarchs with great wisdom and effectiveness. While he was not always correct in his political assessments or an advocate of reform, he survived and kept the confidence and support of his monarch despite many challenges and crises. In a hectic and economically troubled era, Cecil provided the domestic stability and external peace that enabled Queen Elizabeth I to retire gracefully and allowed King James I to establish a new dynasty with popular support.

Bibliography

Cecil, Algernon. A Life of Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury. London: John Murray, 1915. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971. A dated, apologetic, and occasionally inaccurate biography, it is still the best picture of the “public” man.

Cecil, David. The Cecils of Hatfield House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. A popular portrayal of the family’s founder by a descendant; includes an account of the house that Cecil spent five years and thirty-eight thousand pounds to restore.

Coakley, Thomas M. “Robert Cecil in Power: Elizabethan Politics in Two Reigns.” In Early Stuart Studies: Essays in Honor of David Harris Willson. Edited by Howard S. Reinmuth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970. A balanced assessment of the style and consequences of Cecil’s managerial and political activities.

Croft, Pauline. “Brussels and London: The Archdukes, Robert Cecil, and James I.” In Albert and Isabella, 1598-1621: Essays, edited by Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998. Explores Cecil’s diplomatic activities in Brussels on behalf of the king. Includes bibliographic references.

Croft, Pauline., ed. Patronage, Culture, and Power: The Early Cecils. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. Interdisciplinary anthology of essays about the patronage activities of Robert Cecil and his father. Discusses the Cecils effects on painting, music, architecture, and other arts, as well as the relationship between their patronage and their political goals. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Handover, P. M. The Second Cecil. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959. A detailed biography of Cecil’s rise to power that corrects factual errors in Algernon Cecil’s account. Contains a weak assessment of Cecil’s career.

Hurstfield, Joel. The Queen’s Wards: Wardship and Marriage Under Elizabeth I. Rev. ed. London: Cass, 1973. A valuable description of the activities of the court with a defense of Cecil’s activities as its master.

Hurstfield, Joel. “The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England.” In Freedom, Corruption, and Government in Elizabethan England. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973. A realistic evaluation of Cecil’s contribution to the negotiations that produced an orderly transition of power.

Lindquist, Eric N. “The Last Years of the First Earl of Salisbury, 1610-1612.” Albion 18 (Spring, 1986): 33-41. A solid refutation of the assertion that Cecil fell from favor after the failure of the Great Contract of 1610.

Loomie, Albert J. Spain and the Early Stuarts, 1585-1655. Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996. Study of Stuart-Spanish diplomacy, with a chapter on Salisbury’s diplomatic service. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Wilson, David Harris. King James VI and I. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. A definitive biography; includes a detailed account of Cecil’s activities during James’s reign.