CECIL, William (1591-1668)

William Cecil was born on 28 Mar. 1591, the only son of Robert Cecil, secretary of state to both Elizabeth I and James I. He was created a knight of the Bath on 6 Jan. 1605 and four months later, when his father was created earl of Salisbury, became known by the courtesy title of Viscount Cranborne. As the only heir to the earldom he lived an indulged and privileged life, heavily promoted at court by his father, who was growing increasingly rich throughout the two decades at the turn of the century through the various perquisites of the many offices he held. Stone, Family and Fortune, 3-15. On 1 Dec. 1608 he married Catherine, the daughter of Thomas Howard^†, earl of Suffolk, the lord chamberlain. Through his father’s influence he served as one of the bearers of the king’s train at the ceremony for the investiture of the royal heir, Henry, as prince of Wales on 4 June 1610. HMC Downshire, ii. 315. His father was also instrumental in assuring that only a few days after this ceremony the Dorset corporation of Weymouth returned Cranborne, at that point only 19 years of age, as one of their burgesses in Parliament, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of the sitting Member, Thomas Barfoot^‡. His time in the Commons was brief, as he left to travel on the continent in September 1610, from which he returned in May 1611 to take up a place at the court of the young prince of Wales.

Cranborne inherited the earldom of Salisbury upon his father’s death on 24 May 1612. The death of his father and of his patron Henry, prince of Wales, in November of that year cut short the new earl’s assured rise at court, and he did not receive further advancement under James I. Instead he turned to taking up a prominent role in local administration. The family’s centre of power was Hertfordshire and was centred around Hatfield House, the grand Jacobean residence which the first earl of Salisbury had built on the site of the former royal palace there which he had received after exchanging his hunting lodge of Theobalds Palace with James I. The Cecil family’s townhouse of Salisbury House on the Strand in Westminster gave Salisbury a base close to Parliament and also an influence in the governance of the capital, both in Westminster and Middlesex. Salisbury also owned, through an earlier grant to his father, the manor of the dissolved Cranborne priory in Dorset (hence the earldom’s courtesy title). VCH Dorset, ii. 70-73. After his succession to the title in 1612, and having barely reached his majority, Salisbury was appointed lord lieutenant of Hertfordshire, high steward of the county town of Hertford and ranger of Enfield Chase in Middlesex; he was later, in 1619, also made custos rotulorum of the county. From this point he also served in a number of other roles – as justice of the peace and a member of a number of commissions – in Hertfordshire (and particularly the liberty of St Albans, so close to Hatfield), Middlesex, Westminster and the other Home Counties. Salisbury’s copious local offices and responsibilities in the first half of the seventeenth century, before the Restoration, are set out and discussed in much greater detail in his entry in the volumes treating the Commons in 1604-29. Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, writing from the vantage point of defeat and exile after the Civil War, was later to comment on Salisbury that, as lord lieutenant and Charles I’s representative in Hertfordshire:

he continued so obsequious to the court that he never failed in over-acting all that he was required to do. No act of power was ever proposed which he did not advance, and execute his part, with the utmost rigour. No man so great a tyrant in his country, or was less swayed by any motives of justice or honour. He was a man of no words, except in hunting and hawking, in which he only knew how to behave himself. In matters of state and counsel he always concurred in what was proposed for the king. Clarendon, Rebellion, ii. 543.

Indeed, by 1621, after the fall of Sir Francis Bacon^†, Viscount St Albans, there was no competitor to Salisbury among the nobility in Hertfordshire either in wealth or authority. Salisbury thus also acted as the leading electoral patron in Hertfordshire throughout the elections of the 1620s and perhaps even in 1640. Salisbury also had a strong interest in the parliamentary borough of St Albans, located near his house at Hatfield, and he and the governors of the corporation negotiated before each election about how many burgesses Salisbury had the right to nominate. The franchise of the county town of Hertford had lapsed after 1376, but its corporation, supported by the town’s high steward Salisbury, lobbied for its re-enfranchisement, a petition which was supported by the crown and granted before the election of 1624. For the remaining elections of the decade Salisbury had the nomination of at least one burgess for that constituency and his interest, and that of his family, in the county town was further strengthened when Charles I granted him the castle and manor of Hertford in 1630. The Cecils, both as earls and later marquesses of Salisbury, continued to act as high stewards of the town for the following two centuries at least. Salisbury also had a claim to electoral interest in Old Sarum through his possession of the castle and warren there. His interest was disputed by William Herbert^†, 3rd earl of Pembroke, but after Pembroke’s death in 1630 Salisbury entered into a more co-operative relation, indeed a friendship (which was to have important consequences), with the new earl, Philip Herbert^†, 4th earl of Pembroke, and by 1640 the two had agreed to divide between themselves the nomination of candidates for Old Sarum. EHR, lxxi. 384-400; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 176-82, 448-50; Turnor, 119-20.

After the accession of Charles I, Salisbury initially received a few prominent marks of royal favour. His inability to progress further in Charles’s favour may have been owing to the dislike of George Villiers^†, duke of Buckingham, and to Salisbury’s own patronage of radical puritan clerics, who found a favourable reception at Hatfield House during the 1630s. In the early days of the Long Parliament he was initially indecisive about what position to take, but by March 1642 the parliamentarians trusted him sufficiently to make him lord lieutenant of both Hertfordshire and Dorset. A. and O. i. 1. Perhaps key to his siding with Parliament were his personal connections. His daughter Anne married Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, in 1629; another daughter, Catherine, married Philip Sydney, styled Viscount Lisle (later 3rd earl of Leicester). His association and friendship – much noted by the hostile Clarendon – with Philip Herbert^†, 4th earl of Pembroke, also probably played a role. Clarendon, ii. 543. From 1645, if not earlier, Salisbury voted consistently with Northumberland and Pembroke in the principal divisions of the House, as part of the group of peers advocating support of the army and an anti-clerical and ‘independent’ church settlement. J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The Peerage in Politics, 1645-9’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis 1986), App. A-D. It is not surprising then that Clarendon gave a damning verdict of Salisbury’s record in the Civil War, in which he suggested that Salisbury and Pembroke – so frequently linked by commentators in this period – were ‘so totally without credit or interest in the Parliament or country, that it was no matter which way their inclinations or affections disposed them’ and that their chief motivation in siding with the ruling faction in Parliament was to save their own estates and houses, which ‘they both believed to be the highest point of prudence and politic circumspection’. Clarendon, iii. 495-6.

After the execution of the king and the abolition of the House of Lords, Salisbury was persuaded by Pembroke to accept and support the Commonwealth. He was elected to the Council of State and quickly became integrated in the ceremonial intended to legitimize the Commonwealth. He and Pembroke, with Edward Howard, Baron Howard of Escrick, were the only members of the peerage to take advantage of the provision in the 1649 ordinance for the abolition of the House of Lords that allowed them to stand for the Commons. He voted in favour of offering the crown to the Protector on 25 Mar. 1657, but surprisingly he was not nominated to Cromwell’s ‘Other House’ in November, despite already being a peer. He attended the Commons again at the reconvening of the Rump in May 1659 following the fall of the Protectorate. Here he was joined by Philip Herbert, 5th earl of Pembroke, the son and heir of his friend and colleague the 4th earl, who had died in 1650 and had appointed Salisbury one of his executors. HMC Hatfield, xxii. 423, 427, 428. A personal loss afflicted Salisbury at this time when in late September 1659 his son and heir, Charles Cecil^‡, styled Viscount Cranborne, died in France, leaving as his heir apparent Salisbury’s young grandson James Cecil, now styled Viscount Cranborne and later 3rd earl of Salisbury. Ibid. 434-6; HHM, Estate pprs. Bills 254/18.

In drawing up his list of the potential membership of the Convention House of Lords, Salisbury’s colleague from the 1640s, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, placed him and Pembroke at the head of his brief list of ‘lords who sat in both houses’ during the previous 20 years. There was no suggestion here that Salisbury would be unable to sit in the Convention and he resumed his seat in the House on 1 May 1660. However, other contemporaries were sure that Salisbury’s involvement with the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and particularly his membership in an assembly, the Rump, which had voted through the abolition of the House of Lords, would not go unpunished. Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich, assured the king and Samuel Pepys^‡ on 4 May that Salisbury and Pembroke would be ‘put out’ and ‘cashiered’ from the restored House, but had to backtrack two days later upon being informed of Salisbury’s successful and unhindered entrance into the House. Bodl. Clarendon 72, ff. 165-6, 240; Pepys Diary, i. 127. Salisbury proved to be a reasonably diligent attender and came to 56 per cent of the Convention’s sitting days, his highest attendance rate for any session after 1660. In these early days of the assembly he still maintained some prominence and on 9 May was added to the committee for the reception of the returning king and on 26 May, the day after the king’s landfall, was named to the committee to arrange the placing of servants at Whitehall to ensure the king’s safety.

After the influx of royalist peers in the House from 1 June 1660, the rumours that he would be ‘degraded’ resurfaced. His previous activities became an issue from 11 July when the House considered the Indemnity bill, from which it was thought Salisbury would be excepted because of his role in the Rump. On 18 July, though, Salisbury was conveniently granted the king’s pardon for all his offences of the past 20 years. HHM, Family pprs. 8, pp. 2, 4; Deeds 26/2; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 438. As thanks for his pardon, on 24 Aug. Salisbury entertained the king lavishly at Hatfield, spending in excess of £40 on sweetmeats, white wine and 65 gallons of canary. Family pprs. 8, p. 8; Family pprs. Supp. 2, p. 141; Accounts 49/13; Household Accounts, Box M.9; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 436-9. Although Salisbury retained his peerage and his seat in the House, he was not particularly active there and was named to only four select committees throughout the Convention, those on the bills for: draining the Great Level in the fens (nominated on 30 Aug.); confirming marriages (9 Nov.); restoring Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel, to the dukedom of Norfolk (10 Nov.); and establishing an excise on beer and ale (18 Dec.). Nor was he entrusted with any significant local or national office after the Restoration, except for that of ranger of Enfield Chase, which position he regained at the time of the king’s return. He, nevertheless, neglected his duties as ranger, destroying the wood in the chase and allowing the buildings to fall into disrepair so that by May 1661, he was forced to forfeit the office to one of the king’s favourites, Charles Gerard, Baron Gerard of Brandon (later earl of Macclesfield). CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 588; 1661-2, p. 189.

Salisbury was instructed to attend the coronation of April 1661, ‘furnished and appointed’ suitable to his rank and quality. HMC Hatfield, xxii. 440. His compromised past, however, may have affected his influence in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament. The election for Hertfordshire saw the return of Sir Richard Franklin^‡, who had not held office in the Interregnum, and the zealous royalist Sir Thomas Fanshawe^‡, shortly to be created Viscount Fanshawe of Dromore [I]. It is not known whether Salisbury supported either of these candidates, or indeed any others, but the note in the Hatfield accounts that almost £71 was spent on ‘Mr Pritchard at the Bell in Hertford for his lordship’s proportion of the expense at the choosing of knights of the shire to serve in Parliament’ suggests that Salisbury was involved in the election, and was probably present for the hustings in the county town. Salisbury exercised no discernable influence in the 1661 elections for St Albans. The royalist Fanshawes of Ware Park were preponderant at Hertford, and Thomas Fanshawe^‡, the son of the Member for Hertfordshire, was returned for one of the borough’s seats. In 1660 Salisbury had put forward his son, Algernon Cecil, as a candidate at Old Sarum, but he had received only ten of the slightly over 50 votes held by the burgage-owners there, a lack of support which Salisbury blamed on Pembroke whom he felt had not acted sufficiently in Cecil’s interest. Consequently, Salisbury did not make a nomination for that borough at the elections for the Cavalier Parliament. HP Commons, 1660-1690, i. 268-71, 455; EHR, lxxi. 387.

On 8 May 1661 Salisbury was present in the House for the first day of the Cavalier Parliament and thereafter attended 46 per cent of sittings of that session. He only came to a little more than one third of the sittings in the first part of the session in spring 1661. On 15 June 1661 the House ordered his wife, the countess of Salisbury, to be summoned before the committee for privileges in the matter of the peerage claim of Nicholas Knollys, 3rd earl of Banbury, whose family was intermarried with her own family of the Howards. On 28 June Salisbury was named to the committee to consider the bill to clean the streets in Westminster, a measure in which he would have had a personal interest as the owner of Salisbury House on the Strand. The following day Salisbury’s parliamentary privilege was employed to halt legal proceedings involving an ejectment from Brownsea Island in Dorset, part of Salisbury’s property in that county. On 11 July 1661 he opposed the claims of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, for the office of great chamberlain against those of the incumbent Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey. He did not return to the House immediately when it resumed on 20 Nov. 1661. At a call of the House on 25 Nov. he was recorded as sick, but at this time Salisbury was also preoccupied with the arrangements for the marriage of his grandson and heir Cranborne to Margaret, the daughter of John Manners, 8th earl of Rutland. Rutland promised a portion of £9,000 with his daughter, but the marriage did not take place until 1665, presumably owing to the youth of the couple, both well below their majorities. Estate pprs. Box V, 69-74; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 439. Salisbury returned to the House on 9 Dec. 1661 and attended half of this second part of the session, during which he was named to five committees on legislation. Most of these nominations were in March 1662 and were on bills such as those for: preventing the importation of foreign wool-cards (established on 5 Mar.); directing the prosecution of those who were accountable for prize goods (21 Mar.); and cleaning and repairing the streets of Westminster (25 Mar.); as well as two bills on private estate legislation. Salisbury left the House for the session on 7 Apr. After his departure he was kept up to date with events in Parliament by letters from his son-in-law, Northumberland, which kept him informed in particular of the progress of the bill to declare as illegitimate the male child born to Anne, Lady Roos, the estranged and adulterous wife of John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland), the son and heir of Rutland and brother to Salisbury’s prospective granddaughter-in-law. Salisbury had, not surprisingly considering his friendship and alliance with the Manners family, long been concerned by this domestic scandal which threatened to compromise the descent of the earl of Rutland’s lands and titles, and when the matter was before Parliament Northumberland encouraged the elderly peer to hasten to Westminster in early May 1662 to give his voice in support of the bill. HHM, Cecil pprs. 131/201; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 441-5.

Salisbury was present for the first day of the 1663 session and attended 35 per cent of the sittings. He was named to two committees, for the bills concerning abatements of writs of error (established on 21 Mar.) and for the improvement of Ashdown Forest (11 Apr.). On 13 Apr. the House heard the claims of a breach of Salisbury’s privilege, in which the deputy lieutenants of Somerset had allegedly over-assessed Salisbury for his moiety of the rectory of Martock, and in February his tenants there were levied £20 in lieu of the horse and arms charged on the earl. The House referred the matter to the committee for privileges, but it does not appear that the matter was ever reported back to the House. Salisbury attended the House for the last time that session on 14 Apr. and on that same day registered his proxy with his old parliamentarian colleague Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. Wharton forecast that Manchester would use Salisbury’s proxy to add to his own vote on 13 July in support of the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. There has been a misapprehension among some historians that at the time of Bristol’s impeachment of Clarendon, the elderly Salisbury was writing detailed letters on its proceedings to Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, then still in his minority, and with whom Salisbury had no known family or regional connection. This claim arises through a misreading of the name of Huntingdon’s actual newsletter correspondent, Thomas Salusbury. It must be noted that the earl of Salisbury was not present in the House to witness or comment on these proceedings. Bodl. Carte 76, ff. 5, 7; Carte 77, ff. 524, 645.

Salisbury was in the House again on 16 Mar. 1664, the first day of the new session, and he attended 11 of the sittings, 31 per cent of the total, but was not named to any committees. He last sat in the House for the session on 5 Apr. and eight days later again registered his proxy with Manchester. He did not attend either of the following two sessions, that of 1664-5 nor that convened in Oxford in October 1665. Salisbury had other matters to occupy him. In 1665 the marriage of Viscount Cranborne to Lady Margaret Manners was finally celebrated, and over the following years Salisbury continued to develop his close relationship with both the earl and countess of Rutland, while the countess of Salisbury looked to the countess of Rutland for a loan of £200, news of which was to be kept strictly secret from her husband Salisbury. Estate pprs. Box T, 57; Box V, 69-74; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 451-7. In the spring of 1666 a fire at Hatfield caused £1,000 worth of damage, but was extinguished with the assistance of local men. Verney, ms mic. M636/20, W. Looker to Sir R. Verney, 11 Apr. 1666; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 450.

Salisbury attended the autumn 1666 session for only 15 sittings, 17 per cent of the total. He first sat on 22 Nov. 1666, two months after the start of business, and six days later, on 28 Nov., he was named to two committees on legislation, one for the bill to allow Sir Richard Franklin^‡, Member for Hertfordshire, to sell part of his estate, and the other to unite some parish churches in Southampton. On 3 Dec. he attended the ceremony at Whitehall where the infant James Stuart, duke of Cambridge, was installed as a knight of the Garter. TNA, PRO/ZJ 1/1 no. 100. Salisbury attended the House for the last time that session on 18 December. This was also his last sitting in his career. He was clearly ailing by this point, although on 20 July 1667 Laurence Hyde, (later earl of Rochester) wrote to his mother-in-law the countess of Burlington from Whitehall that he had waited on Salisbury and ‘should not have thought him ill, if I had not been told so, for I never saw him look better and he is so much better that he intended to go into the country again today’. Add. 75355, L. Hyde to countess of Burlington, 20 July 1667. At calls of the House on 29 Oct. 1667 and 17 Feb. 1668, in the subsequent session of 1667-9, he was recorded as being sick and excused attendance.

He nevertheless maintained, and even renewed, his electoral interests. In 1666 and 1668 he was involved in by-elections in both the county of Hertfordshire and the borough of St Albans. The spring of 1668 was particularly busy, and expensive, for Salisbury, for there were concurrent by-elections in both Hertfordshire and St Albans. In April 1668 he helped to secure the election of his grandson Viscount Cranborne at Hertfordshire, apparently with the help of the Quakers, who feared Cranborne’s opponent, a rigorous Anglican high churchman. The by-election at St Albans in May 1668 saw the return of Samuel Grimston^‡ of Gorhambury, perhaps with the aid of Salisbury, for the earl’s agents recorded on 14 May, the day before the return was sealed, that ‘our rotten election at St Albans cost us near £1,200, and without extraordinary supplies will starve us before Michaelmas’. HP Commons, 1660-1690, i. 269, 271; EHR, lxxi. 388 (where quote is misattributed to the Hertfordshire by-election); Family pprs. 8, 83. Salisbury was declining, ‘near death’, throughout the autumn of 1668 and died on 3 Dec. at Hatfield. Add. 36916, ff. 116, 121. He left the estate in a precarious position. Salisbury’s gross annual income for 1662 had been calculated at £9,000 and in that same year his estates in Northamptonshire were assessed at £1,617 p.a. and those in Essex at £539. HHM, Accounts 129/13; Add. 34222, f. 38v; HMC 14th Rep IX. 281; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 445-6. By the time of his death the Cecil estates had a total gross income of under £12,500 p.a., but out of that the estate was charged by his will with £3,420 p.a. of legacies and annuities, including an annuity worth £1,800 to the dowager Viscountess Cranborne and annuities totalling £920 p.a. to his younger children. In addition, Salisbury died with debts of £18,840, and the estate also had to provide for the jointures of both the dowager countess and dowager viscountess, which together totalled £4,000 p.a., and had to be provided for until the last of the two died in 1675. Salisbury, by his short will written in January 1665, made his grandson and heir James Cecil, now 3rd earl of Salisbury, sole executor of this troubled situation, and especially charged him with paying some of the large debts from the income of the estate of Ruislip in Middlesex. Stone, 153-4; HHM, Box P/11.