Poncianito's " The Flying Dutchman 33" : Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

Monday, June 1, 2015

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, KG PC (1 June 1563? – 24 May 1612) was an English administrator and politician.

Early 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.

Cecil attended St John's College, Cambridge in the 1580s, but did not take a degree. He also attended "disputations" at the Sorbonne. In 1584 he sat for the first time in the House of Commons, representing his birthplace, the borough of Westminster. In 1589 Cecil married Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, and his second wife, Frances Newton. Their son, William Cecil was born in Westminster on 28 March 1591 and baptised in St Clement Danes on 11 April. Elizabeth died when their son was six years old.

Secretary of State

Following the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Burghley acted as Secretary of State, while Cecil took on an increasingly heavy work-load. 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.

Cecil was extensively involved in matters of state security. As the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal minister and a protégé of Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth's principal spymaster), he was trained by them in spycraft as a matter of course. The "Rainbow portrait" of Queen Elizabeth, decorated with eyes and ears, may relate to this role.

In 1603, his brother-in-law Lord Cobham was implicated in both the Bye Plot and the Main Plot, an attempt to remove James from the throne and replace him with Lady Arbella Stuart. 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.

James persuaded Salisbury to exchange his Hertfordshire House Theobalds for the royal palace at Hatfield, a relatively old-fashoned property. Cecil proceeded to rebuild Hatfield Palace as Hatfield House.

Salisbury served as both the third chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin and chancellor of the University of Cambridge between 1601 and 1612. In addition, the Cecil family fostered arts: they supported musicians such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Robinson.

His motto was "Sero, sed serio", which can be translated as 'late but in earnest'.

Death

In poor health, Salisbury went on a journey to take the waters at Bath. He died at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on 24 May 1612. He was buried in Hatfield parish church in a tomb designed by Maximilian Colt.