Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

• 1. Introduction

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  Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, stood at Queen Elizabeth I's bedside in the winter of 1603. He told the dying monarch she must go to bed. Elizabeth roused herself to deliver a sharp rebuke. 'Little man, little man,' she told him, 'Must is not a word to use to princes. Your father were he here durst never speak to me so.' She then noted, wryly, that she knew she must die, and that it made him presumptuous. The exchange captures something essential about this man. He had endured a lifetime of ridicule, from royalty and rival alike. Yet at that moment, no one in England held more political power. Cecil was the younger son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, perhaps the most powerful government minister England had produced in a generation. He would spend his career both inheriting and escaping that shadow.

• 2. Body and Bloodline

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  At 5 feet 4 inches tall, with scoliosis that left him visibly hunchbacked, Cecil stood far outside the courtly ideal of his age. He lived in a world that attached great importance to physical beauty in both sexes, and he endured much ridicule because of it. Nicolò Molin, the Venetian ambassador, described him as short and 'crook-backed' but noted that he possessed a noble countenance and fine features. Queen Elizabeth I called him 'my pygmy.' King James I would later favor the nickname 'my little beagle.' Despite this steady supply of diminutive labels, his father had recognized an essential truth. Robert, not his elder half-brother Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, had inherited the family's political genius.

  Cecil's mother was Mildred Cooke, the eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea, Essex. His first cousin was Francis Bacon, later the 1st Viscount St Albans, a philosopher. Cecil attended St John's College, Cambridge, in the 1580s but did not take a degree. He also participated in academic disputations at the Sorbonne. In 1589, he married Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham. Their son William was born in Westminster on the 28th of March 1591 and was baptised at St Clement Danes on the 11th of April. A daughter, Lady Frances Cecil, followed in 1593. Elizabeth Brooke died in 1597, leaving Cecil with two young children. Her brothers Henry and George Brooke were still active figures at court, and their paths would cross Cecil's again in far more dangerous circumstances.

• 3. In the Queen's Service

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  In 1584, Cecil sat in the House of Commons for the first time, representing the borough of Westminster. He was re-elected there in 1586 and went on to represent Hertfordshire in 1589, 1593, 1597, and 1601. For his first years as an MP, he stayed on the back benches and made no speech until 1593. By then he had already been knighted, appointed to the Privy Council, and begun functioning as Secretary of State.

  His training in spy-craft came from two sources: his father, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal spymaster. Both men schooled Cecil in the craft of intelligence as a matter of course. Walsingham died in 1590. In the years that followed, Cecil's responsibilities grew substantially as his father stepped in to manage the Secretary of State's duties alongside his own. The 'Rainbow Portrait' of Queen Elizabeth, held at Hatfield, is decorated with eyes and ears and may relate to Cecil's growing role in state security.

  On the 15th of September 1595, Cecil went hawking with the queen. They caught three partridges and gave them to Elizabeth Wolley. By 1597, he had been made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and had become the Council's leading figure.

  In February 1598, Cecil was dispatched on a delicate mission to France to prevent Henry IV from allying with Spain. He traveled from Dover alongside two fellow ambassadors, John Herbert and Thomas Wilkes. Wilkes died shortly after the party arrived at Rouen. Cecil and Herbert lodged at a house of the Duke of Montpensier in Paris. They then traveled south to meet Henry IV at Angers in March. Cecil had his final audiences with the king at Nantes, and the Duke de Bouillon presented him with a locket containing the king's portrait. The delegation sailed home to Portsmouth from Ouistreham, a port near Caen, aboard the Adventure, commanded by Sir Alexander Clifford. Cecil famously described the queen he served as 'more than a man, but less than a woman.' The most serious threat to his position, however, did not come from France or Spain. It came from the 2nd Earl of Essex, who had both the queen's favor and the public's devotion.

• 4. The Succession Game

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  Around 1600, while Elizabeth still lived, Cecil began a secret correspondence with James VI of Scotland. The conditions Cecil imposed were strict. James must stop seeking parliamentary recognition of his claim, must show absolute respect for the queen's feelings, and must keep the exchange entirely secret. In return, Cecil would assure James of his succession and secure his own continued position in the new reign. It was a bargain struck in private and concealed from the queen Cecil openly admired.

  Essex, meanwhile, had exposed himself. His campaign against the Irish rebels during the Nine Years' War in 1599 went badly. Cecil was then able to consolidate his authority at court. When Essex launched his rebellion in 1601, it was aimed, at least in part, at removing Cecil from power and impeaching him. Essex was executed, along with four of his closest allies. The great majority of his followers were spared. Even Essex's denunciation of his sister Penelope, naming her as the rebellion's ringleader, was tactfully set aside. Cecil had urged this degree of mercy, and he received no public credit for it. The ballad Essex's Last Good Night gave voice to the popular mood.

  James took the throne without opposition. On the 20th of August 1603, he raised Cecil to the peerage as Baron Cecil of Essendon in the County of Rutland. Between 1601 and 1612, Cecil also served as third chancellor of the University of Dublin and chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 1603, Cecil's brothers-in-law, Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, and George Brooke, were implicated in both the Bye and Main Plots. Along with Sir Walter Raleigh, they stood accused of attempting to replace James with his first cousin, Lady Arbella Stuart. Cecil was one of the judges at the subsequent trials. At Raleigh's trial, he was the only judge who appeared to entertain some doubt about Raleigh's guilt. George Brooke was executed at Winchester on the 5th of December 1603 for high treason. Cecil led the English delegation at negotiations that produced the Treaty of London in 1603-1604, ending the long war between England and Spain. The king described the outcome as an 'honourable and advantageous' peace. Cecil accepted a pension of £1,000 that year, later raised to £1,500. James created him Viscount Cranborne shortly after the treaty's signing, then Earl of Salisbury the following year. In 1606, Cecil was appointed the 401st Knight of the Order of the Garter. The previous year had forced him to navigate the most dangerous moment the English state had faced since Elizabeth's reign began.

• 5. The Monteagle Letter

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  William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, brought Cecil an anonymous letter in 1605. The letter warned Monteagle to stay away from the opening of Parliament. That document became the central piece of evidence in the unraveling of the Gunpowder Plot. Cecil is recorded as the plot's principal discoverer. How much he already knew before Monteagle showed him the letter, and whether he acted as an agent provocateur, has been debated ever since.

  The Gunpowder Plot was a belated reaction to what its participants saw as a royal betrayal. King James had given the impression he would ease the Penal Laws. Those statutes imposed severe penalties on Catholics practicing their faith in England. Cecil was among those who advised the king not to alter those laws. His own position was more nuanced than his public reputation suggested. He was personally unhappy with the Jesuits etc. Act of 1584. That law made any Catholic priest found performing priestly functions in England liable to the death penalty in its most gruesome form. Cecil favored exile rather than execution for the priests. He maintained that loyal Catholics deserved to be treated differently from those connected with plots against the throne. The plot's roots lay in the gap between that nuanced private position and the harsher laws the government continued to enforce.

  In 1607, King James appointed Cecil Lord Treasurer, succeeding Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset. That appointment placed the entire conduct of public affairs in Cecil's hands.

• 6. The Treasurer's Wager

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  Royal expenditure had reached £500,000 a year, leaving a yearly deficit of £73,000. Cecil responded by exploiting a ruling from the Court of Exchequer in Bates's Case. That judgment affirmed the king's right to levy import duties. Cecil imposed new duties on luxury goods and on foreign manufactures that competed with English products. By these measures, the ordinary annual income was raised to £460,000, and £700,000 was paid off the national debt. The debt stood at £1.4 million in 1608; by 1610, Cecil had brought that figure down to £300,000.

  The Great Contract was the more ambitious of Cecil's financial schemes. Between 1610 and 1611, Cecil worked to persuade Parliament to accept a fundamental restructuring of royal revenue. Under the proposal, the king would surrender his feudal revenues, including wardship and purveyance. In exchange, he would receive a fixed annual income of approximately £300,000. James had been spending £140,000 beyond his means. Francis Bacon argued against the contract, calling it humiliating. James showed little enthusiasm. When he dissolved Parliament in 1611, against Cecil's advice, the Great Contract lapsed with it. One historian later described the arrangement reached at the Restoration of Charles II as the eventual 'implementation of Cecil's Great Contract.' At that settlement, Charles was to receive an income of approximately £1,200,000 per annum. This came nearly five decades after Cecil had first proposed the principle.

• 7. Stone and Song

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  In 1606, Cecil hosted King James I and his brother-in-law, King Christian IV of Denmark, at Theobalds. Queen Elizabeth's godson, Sir John Harrington, observed the occasion with a sardonic eye. According to Harrington, though he may have been mischievously fictionalizing, the masque laid on for the two kings descended into drunken chaos. 'The entertainment and show went forward,' he wrote, 'and most of the players went backward, or fell down, wine did so occupy their upper chambers.' The following year, King James took possession of Theobalds and gave Hatfield Palace to Cecil in exchange.

  Hatfield House rose from the bricks of the older palace, and work continued on it until 1612. Cecil also remodelled Cranborne Manor, which had originally been a small hunting lodge, and built Salisbury House on the Strand as his London residence.

  William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Robinson, and the Irish harper and composer Cormac MacDermott were among the composers the Cecil household supported. Cecil's motto was 'Sero, sed serio,' which translates as 'late but in earnest.'

  In the spring of 1612, worn out and gravely ill, Cecil traveled to Bath hoping to recover his health. He obtained little relief. He started the journey home but died of cancer at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on the 24th of May 1612. He died, it was recorded, 'in great pain and even greater wretchedness of mind.' He was a week short of his 49th birthday. He was buried in St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield, in a tomb designed by Maximilian Colt. William Byrd named his famous pavane after Cecil, and that work carried his name into centuries he never lived to see.