Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
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Robert Cecil, 1st earl of Salisbury
(born June 1, 1563, London, Eng.died May 24, 1612, Marlborough, Wiltshire) English statesman. Trained in statesmanship by his father, William Cecil, Robert entered the House of Commons in 1584. He became acting secretary of state in 1590 and was formally appointed to the post by Elizabeth I in 1596. He succeeded his father as chief minister in 1598 and guided the peaceful succession of Elizabeth by James I, for whom he continued as chief minister from 1603 and lord treasurer from 1608. He negotiated the end of the war with Spain in 1604 and allied England with France.
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Oxford Dictionary of British History:
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Richard Neville Salisbury
Salisbury, Richard Neville, 5th earl of (1400-60). Neville was the first son of the (second) marriage of Ralph, 1st earl ofWestmorland, and John of Gaunt's daughter Anne Beaufort. From 1420 to 1436 he was warden of the west march. Royal offices increased his north country dominance. He gained the earldom of Salisbury by marriage to its heiress. Percy opposition to his regional preponderance led to violence and became a reason for Salisbury's breach with the court after 1453 and his alliance with Richard of York. He was chancellor in York's first protectorate and fought with him at St Albans; in 1459, at Blore Heath (Staffs.), he defeated royalist forces opposing his junction with York. Following the Yorkist collapse, he was attainted and took refuge at Calais, returning with his son Warwick to defeat the royalists at Northampton. He was murdered after the battle of Wakefield.
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Richard Neville Salisbury
Salisbury, Robert Cecil, 1st earl of, 1563-1612, English statesman; son of William Cecil, Baron Burghley. He entered Parliament and came gradually to rank second only to his father as adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. About 1589 he began to perform the duties of secretary of state, and he was officially appointed to that position in 1596. He became chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1597 and in 1598 succeeded his father as principal secretary, despite the rivalry of Francis Bacon and the 2d earl of Essex. The fall and execution of Essex in 1601 cleared the way for Cecil to enter into secret negotiations with James VI of Scotland and arrange the latter's peaceful accession to the English throne as James I on the death of Elizabeth (1603). After the accession of James, Cecil was created Baron Cecil (1603), Viscount Cranborne (1604), and earl of Salisbury (1605). His influence over James was due to his abilities, not, as in the case of the earl of Somerset and the 1st duke of Buckingham, to a personal ascendancy over the king. For the remainder of his life virtually the entire administration of the government was in his care. The duties of lord treasurer devolved upon Salisbury in 1608. He exhibited great financial skill, reducing the king's debt and attempting to restrain James's extravagance. However, his practice of levying impositions (customs duties) without parliamentary consent raised a storm in Parliament. In 1610, Salisbury negotiated the so-called Great Contract with Parliament, by which James was to receive a settled income in return for abandoning his feudal revenues. The agreement was broken off, however, because of mutual suspicions. In foreign affairs Salisbury ended (1604) the war with Spain and thereafter attempted to maintain a balance of power between France and Spain. After 1604 he received a pension from Spain, but his hope that England might lead a Protestant alliance led him to support the marriage (1612) of James's daughter Elizabeth to the elector palatine. Salisbury planned and had built the great Jacobean mansion Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.
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Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
| The Right Honourable The Earl of Salisbury KG, Privy Council |
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|---|---|
.jpg) |
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| The Earl of Salisbury by John de Critz the Elder ca. 1602 | |
| Lord High Treasurer | |
| In office 4 May 1608 – 17 June 1612 |
|
| Monarch | James I |
| Preceded by | The Earl of Dorset |
| Succeeded by | Commission of the Treasury The Earl of Northampton, First Lord |
| Lord Privy Seal | |
| In office 1598–1608 |
|
| Monarch | Elizabeth I James I |
| Preceded by | The Lord Burghley |
| Succeeded by | The Earl of Northampton |
| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | |
| In office 8 October 1597 – 1599 |
|
| Monarch | Elizabeth I |
| Preceded by | In commission |
| Succeeded by | In commission |
| Secretary of State | |
| In office 5 July 1590 – 24 May 1612 |
|
| Monarch | Elizabeth I James I |
| Preceded by | William Davison |
| Succeeded by | John Herbert |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Robert Cecil 1 June 1563 City of London, England |
| Died | 24 May 1612 (aged 48) Marlborough, Wiltshire England |
| Spouse(s) | Lady Elizabeth Brooke |
| Relations | The Lord Burghley (Father) |
| Residence | Hatfield House |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Cambridge |
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, KG, PC (1 June 1563? – 24 May 1612) was an English administrator and politician.
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Life
He was the son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and Mildred Cooke. His half-brother was Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter and philosopher Francis Bacon was his first cousin.
After his education at St John's College, Cambridge,[1][2] Salisbury was made Secretary of State following the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, and he became the leading minister after the death of his father in 1598, serving both Queen Elizabeth and King James as Secretary of State. He fell into dispute with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and only prevailed upon the latter's poor campaign against the Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1599. He was then in a position to orchestrate the smooth succession of King James, maintaining a 'secret correspondence.' For most of his working life he served as spymaster for King James.
King James raised him to the peerage on 20 August 1603 as Baron Cecil, of Essendon in the County of Rutland, before creating him Viscount Cranborne in 1604 and then Earl of Salisbury in 1605. Lord Salisbury was extensively involved in matters of state security. The son of Lord Burghley (Queen Elizabeth's principal minister) and a protégé of Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth's principal spymaster), he was trained by them in matters of spycraft as a matter of course. In 1603 his brother-in-law Lord Cobham was implicated in both the Bye Plot and also the Main Plot, which were an attempt to remove James from the throne and replace him with Lady Arbella Stuart.
Salisbury served as both the third chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin and chancellor of the University of Cambridge [3] between 1601 and 1612. In addition, the Cecil family fostered arts: they supported musicians such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Robinson.[4]
Cecil married Elizabeth, the daughter of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham in 1589. Their son, William Cecil was born in Westminster on 28 March 1591 and baptized in St Clement Danes on 11 April. Elizabeth died when their son was six years old.[5] He succeeded his father as Earl of Salisbury.
Portrayals
- He appears as the character "Lord Cecil" in the opera Roberto Devereux (1837) by Gaetano Donizetti
- In the BBC TV drama serial Elizabeth R (1971), "Sir Robert Cecil" is played by Hugh Dickson.
- In the TV miniseries Elizabeth I, Cecil is played by Toby Jones.
- In the alternate history novel Ruled Britannia, predicated on the victory of the Spanish Armada in 1588, he and his father organise the English resistance movement against the Spanish with the help of William Shakespeare.
- Robert Cecil was portrayed as the unsympathetic, conniving antagonist of the play, Equivocation, written by Bill Cain, which first premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2009. In the play, it is suggested that Cecil was behind the conspiracies of the gunpowder plot in order to kill King James and the royal family. Cecil was first portrayed by Jonathan Haugen. The character in the show was given a serious limp, and is said to hate the word "tomorrow" and to know every detail about everything that goes on in London.
- Robert Cecil also appeared in the book Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease, where he was the head of the secret service and has a major role as to what Peter Brownrigg does.
- Robert Cecil is portrayed sympathetically in the historical mystery series featuring Joan and Matthew Stock, written by Leonard Tourney, where he is a patron to the main characters. The first novel is The Players' Boy is Dead
- Sir William Cecil features prominently in Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy's play 'The O'Neill' (1969), in which Kilroy uses Cecil to challenge the myth surrounding Gaelic Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone just after the latter's victory over the English at The Yellow Ford. Cecil's dramatic function is to demonstrate the complexity of history as opposed to simplistic pieties that would turn O'Neill into yet another victim of the English. Cecil 'obliges' O'Neill to reenact the past so the audience witnesses the moral dilemma of a man torn between two cultures and keenly aware of the advance of modernity in a troubled political, cultural and religious context.
- He is portrayed unsympathetically by Edward Hogg as a malevolent hunchbacked villain in Roland Emmerich's movie Anonymous.
References
- ^ Venn, J.; Venn, J. A., eds. (1922–1958). "Cecil, Robert". Alumni Cantabrigienses (10 vols) (online ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Britannica.com
- ^ Cam.ac.uk, "Chancellors of the University of Cambridge"
- ^ William Casey (pub.), Alfredo Colman (pub.), Thomas Robinson: New Citharen Lessons (1609), 1997 Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas, ISBN 0-918954-65-7
- ^ G. D. Owen. "Cecil, William, second earl of Salisbury (1591–1668)," in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-2007.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury |
- http://www.thepeerage.com/p1183.htm#i11825
- Archival material relating to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury listed at the UK National Register of Archives
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