CECIL, Charles, Visct. Cranborne (1619-59), of Hatfield, Herts.

Lord Cranborne, accompanied by his younger brother, Robert*, rounded off his education with a two-year visit to northern France commencing in the spring of 1636. This mostly took them to the area around Paris and to the Loire, although it extended to Geneva, where he subscribed at the Academy. The total cost was over £3,600.29Hatfield House, CFEP Box I/4, ff. 19-21; CFEP Bills 210, unfol.; Livre du Recteur, i. 187. On his return, the search for a suitable bride for him began. There was some speculation that he might marry Lady Dorothy Sidney (‘Sacharissa’), daughter of the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sydney†). But Cranborne was instead married off to a likely heiress, Lady Diana Maxwell, one of the two daughters of the wealthy Scottish courtier, James Maxwell, the first gentleman usher daily waiter and Black Rod.30London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 257; VCH Herts. Fams. 117-18. She brought with her a portion of £18,000, jewels worth another £4,000, land in England to the value of £800 per annum, and more on her father’s death. Nevertheless Cranborne was considered to have married beneath himself and, according to one observer, the Cecils’ reputation suffered from their ‘high avariciousness’.31CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 622. In early 1640 he was added to the Hertfordshire commission of the peace.32Coventry Docquets, 77. On 3 April, ten days before the new Parliament assembled, he was among the official party who received the new Spanish ambassador extraordinary at Greenwich.33J. Finet, Ceremonies of Charles I, ed. A.J. Loomie (New York, 1987), 276; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 6.

Cranborne was elected to the Short Parliament as the MP for Hertford on the nomination of his father, who was the town’s high steward. As soon as the Commons got down to business on 16 April he was named to two committees, namely those to seek a conference with the Lords about the proposed fast day and the committee for privileges.34CJ ii. 4a. Once both Houses and the king had agreed that the fast day should be held, Cranborne was one of the 24 MPs sent to the Lords on 22 April to discuss the date to be chosen for it.35CJ ii. 9a. That his colleagues clearly assumed that Cranborne, the eldest son and heir of an earl, was especially suited to act as an intermediary in their communications with the Lords is no great surprise. But it was a role Cranborne seems to have performed well and it was one that would come to dominate his time in the next, much more protracted Parliament. Following the failure of this Parliament, the king planned to renew his war against the Scottish Covenanters. As part of those preparations, Charles appointed Cranborne as joint lord lieutenant of Hertfordshire with his father.36Hatfield House, CP 131/108; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 658. The two of them therefore spent that summer raising troops in the county.37Hatfield House, CP 131/112-15, 118-20, 123, 125, 127; HMC 4th Rep.27.

Cranborne was re-elected at Hertford on 26 October 1640. As before, one of his first tasks in this new Parliament (9 Nov.) was to help set the date of the fast day held to encourage prayers for its success.38CJ ii. 23b. The next day, he was a member of the large committee appointed for the conference with the Lords over the peers’ complaints about breaches of privilege by MPs.39CJ ii. 25b. Later that same month he was appointed to the committee for the conference at which they set out the evidence against the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) (30 Nov.).40CJ ii. 39b. But he then left no trace in the records between early December 1640 and 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation.41CJ ii. 43a, 133b. He was certainly present in the House on 19 May, as he was one of a number of MPs who fled from the chamber on hearing a sudden crack, caused, it transpired, by some of the woodwork in the gallery giving way.42Procs. LP, iv. 459-60, 470.

Cranborne had not necessarily been absent during early 1641; he had probably not yet spoken in the House and he may have been reluctant to involve himself in committee work. That he becomes more visible in the records during that summer of 1641 was mostly because he now began to be used on a regular basis as a messenger to the Lords. By late June the disbandment of the armies in the north of England was being finalised and plans were being made for the king’s journey to Scotland. Cranborne was therefore sent to the Lord on 24 June to request another joint conference on those subjects.43CJ ii. 185b; LJ iv. 284b; Procs. LP, v. 317, 324, 327. On 12 July he was named to the committee for discussions with the Lords about the king’s latest response to the Ten Propositions.44CJ ii. 207a. The plan by the queen to travel to Spa was viewed by some with suspicion. So two days later Cranborne returned to the Lords to seek a joint conference about that.45CJ ii. 211b; LJ iv. 313b; Procs. LP, v. 636, 641, 645. MPs remained just as apprehensive over the fact that the king would meanwhile be absent in Scotland. When the Commons decided to debate this on 5 August, Cranborne was sent to suggest to the Lords that they should sit then as well in case they wished to consult them.46CJ ii. 238a; LJ iv. 342b. In the meantime, on 24 July, Cranborne had been named to the committee on the militia bill.47CJ ii. 223a.

Cranborne was now distracted by matters rather closer to home. His creditors had apparently been lobbying to get his MP’s immunity against law suits lifted. Cranborne’s counter-petition was presented to the Commons by one of the other Hertfordshire MPs, Sir William Lytton*, on 25 August.48Procs. LP, vi. 551; CJ ii. 270b. His defence was that the debts in question had been run up by his wife, who had overspent by up to £6,000 over the course of just 18 months. Of that, £1,200 had been for ‘ribboning, gloves and masks’. During the resulting debate, the lawyers in the House agreed that a husband could only be liable for his wife’s debts incurred by necessary expenditure, although it was recognised that what counted as necessities varied by social status.49Add. 11045, f. 140. His petition was then referred to the committee for protections.50CJ ii. 270b.

Cranborne resumed his role as regular intermediary with the Lords when MPs returned in late October after the recess. What changed was that the hot topic soon became the news that the Irish Catholics had risen in rebellion. On 9 November he asked the Lords to sit that afternoon.51CJ ii. 308b; D’Ewes (C), 109, 110 That was because, having first discussed those matters themselves, the Commons then wanted a conference to discuss both the loan to be raised to pay the troops to be sent to Ireland and the instructions to be sent to their commissioners in Scotland in the light of recent events. Four days later, he again went to request that the Lords remain in session, as the Commons were ‘in agitation of business of some importance’.52CJ ii. 315a; LJ iv. 438a; D’Ewes (C), 138, 139. Later, on 24 December, he sought a conference on the safety of the kingdom, the immediate purpose of which was to discuss the security of the Tower of London.53CJ ii. 356b; LJ iv. 489a; D’Ewes (C), 347. A week later he was part of the delegation sent to ask the king to increase the size of the guard protecting Parliament.54CJ ii. 365a, 365b.

In the weeks following the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members, control of the London trained bands was of vital importance. On 4 February 1642 Cranborne carried to the Lords the order that Philip Skippon*, who had recently been appointed as the bands’ sergeant major general, was to be protected from arrest.55CJ ii. 412a; PJ i. 272. Control of the other militias was an equally sensitive issue. Having fled from the capital in early January, the king was by late February based at Theobalds, the royal house at Cheshunt of which Cranborne had been the keeper since boyhood. It was therefore appropriate that on 1 March Cranborne headed the group of twelve MPs who accompanied six peers to Theobalds to attempt to negotiate with the king about the county militias.56CJ ii. 462a; PJ i. 489. The next day he reported back that Charles stood by his previous answer and that he had refused to return to the capital as he did not feel safe at Whitehall.57CJ ii. 464a-b; PJ i. 494. Having failed to get the king on side, the two Houses then proceeded with what became the Militia Ordinance. The next step was for them to appoint or confirm the lord lieutenants and deputy lieutenants. On 17 March, as part of that more general process, the Commons nominated Cranborne as one of the deputy lieutenants for Hertfordshire.58CJ ii. 483b. The next day Cranborne attended on the Lords to ask them to sit that afternoon. That may have been because the Commons was considering some of the other militia appointments. The Lords initially agreed, although they later adjourned after they deciding that their patience had been tested long enough.59CJ ii. 485a; LJ iv. 653a; PJ ii. 55, 56.

Parliament’s mounting anxieties were reflected in other ways as well. On 10 February Cranborne was included on the joint committee to open letters which had been intercepted by London port officials, while on 26 February he and Denzil Holles* were dispatched to inform the French ambassador that Parliament intended to expel the Capuchin friars based at Somerset House.60CJ ii. 424b, 458a. The decision by Sir John Hotham* to refuse the king entry to Kingston-upon-Hull only increased the sense of crisis. On 18 May the Commons sent Cranborne to the Lords to propose a joint conference about the latest letter they had received from Hull.61CJ ii. 587a; LJ v. 71a; PJ ii. 338, 339. Three weeks later the Commons was concerned that the lord mayor of London, Sir Richard Gurney, had failed to act on an earlier order commanding him to summon the common council to discuss what to do with the arms seized at Hull and now transported to London. On 7 July Cranborne therefore carried to the Lords the new order reiterating this command. He also took with him the order giving the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†) control over the navy.62CJ ii. 657a, 657b; LJ v. 188a.

The following day Parliament dismissed Salisbury as lord lieutenant for Hertfordshire and Dorset and then appointed Cranborne in his place.63CJ ii. 660b; LJ v. 193a-b. The reason was that the earl had obeyed the king’s summons to attend on him at York. In fact this did not mean that the earl, who still hoped to moderate Charles I’s actions, was siding with the king against Parliament; but that was not how it appeared at the time to those peers and MPs who had remained at Westminster. In the circumstances, Salisbury’s son seemed more reliably committed to Parliament. The lord lieutenancy extended to Dorset to reflect, like Cranborne’s own courtesy title, the fact that Salisbury held the lordship of Cranborne Chase.

Cranborne’s appointment as lord lieutenant of Hertfordshire meant that he was now expected to take the lead in mobilising that county for Parliament. On 14 July he and his fellow Hertfordshire MPs were sent by both Houses to attend the assizes at Hertford to encourage donations of horses and money.64CJ ii. 671b; LJ v. 207b; PJ iii. 213. On 10 August, after Alban Coxe* and others raised forces at St Albans, Cranborne was instructed by the Commons to implement the Militia Ordinance throughout the county.65CJ ii. 712b. On 23 August Sir Thomas Dacres* was able to tell the Commons that he had passed this order on to Cranborne, who now planned to proclaim the ordinance on 30 August.66CJ ii. 733a. Parliament had meanwhile been preparing instructions for him as lord lieutenant of Dorset.67PJ iii. 304-5. He briefly returned to Westminster on 27 August to join with other MPs in taking the covenant swearing his adherence to the 3rd earl of Essex.68CJ ii. 740a.

It may have been felt that Cranborne was too slow in organising Hertfordshire for war.69The Impact of the First Civil War on Herts. 1642-7, ed. A. Thomson (Herts. Rec. Soc. xxiii.), p. xxvii. However, he may well have spent most of his time over the next six months in the county doing his best. The only evidence for his presence at Westminster between August 1642 and March 1643 was his tellership on 21 November. That division was an important one, as it concerned whether the House should resolve itself into a grand committee to discuss the latest letter from the king. Cranborne and William Pierrepont* were the tellers for the majority who supported the motion.70CJ ii. 858a.

If Cranborne had indeed been doing his best in Hertfordshire, the same was manifestly not the case in Dorset. His duties as lord lieutenant in Hertfordshire were what made it so impractical for him to perform comparable duties elsewhere. It was left to the 5th earl of Bedford (William Russell*) during the autumn of 1642 to organise the war effort for Parliament in Dorset.71Bayly, Dorset, 47-60. Nor did Cranborne become any more engaged in Dorset affairs as the war progressed. Despite nominally being the lord lieutenant, he seems to have played no part whatsoever in the civil war in that county.

Cranborne had certainly returned to Westminster by 20 March 1643, because he then acted as messenger when the Commons wanted a conference to discuss the fate of the 1st earl of Newport, who had recently fallen into parliamentarian hands, and to agree the powers to be granted to the commissioners who were to travel to Oxford to resume negotiations with the king.72CJ iii. 9a; LJ v. 655b. Four weeks later, on 15 April, he sought a conference about passes to be granted for persons travelling to and from Oxford and about the letter from Sir William Waller* with news of his victory over Prince Maurice at Ripple.73CJ iii. 46a; LJ vi. 4a; Harl. 164, ff. 368, 368v. On 6 June he missed the debate on the covenant promoted in the wake of the revelations about Waller’s plot, turning up after most Members had subscribed it. He took it immediately, but, like some others in the same situation, he took it again two days later.74CJ iii. 118b, 120a.

Cranborne had a reasonable enough excuse for spending long periods away from Westminster. As lord lieutenant, there was much to keep him busy. Hertfordshire had the potential to be of considerable military significance; it straddled the northern approaches to London and was close to the important battle zones of the midlands. That it never saw any actual fighting did not mean that those who controlled it for Parliament throughout the war could be complacent. In September 1643 Parliament combined Hertfordshire with the existing association comprising London, Middlesex, Essex and Buckinghamshire and authorised its leading supporters in the county to raise a force of volunteers for its defence. Cranborne was then given the command of that force during such a time as it remained within the county.75A. and O. He meanwhile also served on the county standing committee.76Add. 40630, f. 125.

He took the Solemn League and Covenant in the Commons on 19 October 1643, although his attendance at Westminster continued to be patchy. 77CJ iii. 281b. Given his immediate interest in the matter, it cannot even be assumed that he was present on 22 February 1644 when he was named to the committee to examine the Hertfordshire accounts.78CJ iii. 405a. He was however undoubtedly present on 16 May, when he was sent to the Lords to request a conference concerning the bill to continue the Committee of Both Kingdoms; in fact he was not admitted because the peers were busy debating the fate of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.79CJ iii. 494b; Harl. 166, f. 62. He was not then named to a committee until 7 December, when he was included on the joint committee to investigate the conduct of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) at the second battle of Newbury.80CJ iii. 717b.

Cranborne’s absences became an issue after Sir Charles Shirley of Stanton Harold and one of Shirley’s Devereux relatives, probably Leicester Devereux (later 6th Viscount Hereford), challenged him to a duel.81E.P. Shirley, Stemmata Shirleiana (1841), 140. Both men were royalists. Challenging MPs to duels was a clear breach of parliamentary privilege, so on 28 January 1645 Shirley and Devereux were summoned to appear before the House. The Commons also ordered that Cranborne was to ‘be enjoined forthwith to attend the service of the House’.82CJ iv. 32a. Although this could be interpreted as an instruction for him to do so simply to assist the investigation against Shirley and Devereux, it might also have implied a more general questioning of his non-attendance. But Cranborne is not known to have attended until the following July, when he was the teller for those who wanted to agree to the release of one of the Spanish ambassador’s servants.83CJ iv. 193b. At the request of Sir Thomas Dacres*, he was as lord lieutenant of Hertfordshire granted powers by the Commons on 14 August to issue military commissions.84CJ iv. 241a; Harl. 166, f. 253v.

Almost nothing is known about what Cranborne was doing between then and mid-1647. A rare glimpse of him during this period was his visit to the 2nd earl of Leicester at Penshurst at some point during the summer of 1646.85HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 557. On 25 January 1647 he was among those added to the Commons’ committee of accounts.86CJ v. 62b.

By mid-June 1647 the discontented army was advancing towards London in order to put pressure on Parliament to address its grievances. On 16 June, the same day that the army denounced the Eleven Members, the Commons attempted to avert this crisis by voting one month’s pay for the army. In the preceding vote on whether to have that division, Cranborne acted with Sir William Lewis* (who was one of the Eleven) as tellers for the minority.87CJ v. 214a. That suggests that he was aligning himself with the Presbyterians. This makes it doubtful that he was among those, including his father, who fled to the army in late July, although the evidence on this point is ambiguous. The list by Sir Philip Percivalle* does suggest that he did join the fugitive Members. However, he was not among the signatories to their ‘engagement’ later entered into the Lords’ Journal.88HMC Egmont, i. 440; LJ ix. 385b. It may also be the case that the Hertfordshire trained bands and troops of horse rendezvoused at Watford on 5 August and offered their assistance to Sir Thomas Fairfax* without his approval.

On 3 November he and James Fiennes* were the tellers for those who succeeding in blocking the vote on whether absent MPs should be fined.89CJ v. 348b. That was presumably because he had some sympathy with those Presbyterian MPs who, disapproving of recent events, had withdrawn from Westminster. As a teller again on 20 December, he supported the appointment of the archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, as a preacher at Lincoln’s Inn. Given that Ussher had spent the war years with the king at Oxford and so was viewed with suspicion by many at Westminster, this further underlined Cranborne’s pro-Presbyterian sympathies.90CJ v. 393b. Several months later he was named to a committee to consider what compensation should be paid to an ironmaster in the Forest of Dean (8 Mar. 1648).91CJ v. 484b. Then, on 20 April, he was appointed to carry to the Lords the bill allowing Dacres and Henry Pitts to recover the money owed to them by the delinquent Hertfordshire peer, Lord Capell (Arthur Capell*).92CJ v. 538a; LJ x. 213b. That same day he was also included on the committee on the bill to punish those who had failed to attend the muster in Kent.93CJ v. 538a.

Throughout 1648 Cranborne strongly sided with those who wanted to see further negotiations with the king. He thus disapproved of the Vote of No Addresses on 3 January. This found expression in his tellership on 28 April. The Commons was asked whether it wanted to vote on allowing MPs to air possible plans for such negotiations, despite that earlier resolution. Cranborne was one of the tellers for the majority who wanted that vote to proceed and, having won that division, they then secured the resolution permitting such discussions.94CJ v. 547a-b. On 19 May, with the Scots planning a new invasion, Cranborne was one of the four reporters appointed for the joint conference with the Lords on the letter which had been received from their commissioners in Edinburgh.95CJ v. 566a. The decision on 24 May to resume negotiations with the king, albeit on the basis of the Heads of the Proposals, must have delighted Cranborne, who, along with Dacres, was the teller in the crucial division.96CJ v. 572b. While the Heads may not have been entirely what he would have wanted, that talks were to take place at all seemed a step in the right direction.

Since the beginning of the year the Lords had been keen to expand the size of the Derby House Committee. In late May they therefore proposed that six peers, including Salisbury, should be added to it. On 30 May the Commons, with some reluctance, agreed to this expansion and appointed 12 MPs to balance the number of peers. Cranborne was one of those 12.97CJ v. 579a; LJ x. 295b. Almost all of those added, including Salisbury, were committed to a decisive victory in the second civil war and, if they were prepared to countenance talks at all, wanted any settlement with the king to be as exacting as possible. In such company, Cranborne does appear rather anomalous. His subsequent attendance at its meetings was only intermittent. He was present at more than half the meetings during June 1648, usually when his father was also present, but his attendance fell away thereafter, before recovering somewhat in November.98CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 90-323.

His membership of the Derby House Committee and his position as a lord lieutenant may well explain why he headed the list of names of those appointed to the committee on the militia bill on 13 June.99CJ v. 597b. The following month he was also named to the committee to investigate the uprising in Surrey (11 July).100CJ v. 631b. On 14 August John Bulkeley* was able to report that the king was willing to enter into talks. A motion was immediately introduced proposing that a roll-call of MPs be taken on 21 August. Cranborne as a teller for the majority supported this.101CJ v. 671a. A blatant attempt to increase attendance at a time when the House would have to consider whether to proceed with such talks, it had the intended effect on 24 August when the Vote of No Addresses was reversed. That made possible the negotiations at Newport.

The final scene in Cranborne’s parliamentary career was a dramatic one, for in early December 1648 he played a leading role in the decision by the Commons to defy the army over the question of resuming negotiations with the king yet again. The crucial move came on 5 December when the Commons resolved that the answers given by the king during the Newport negotiations were sufficient to justify the resumption of talks with him. In that division Cranborne and (Sir) Raphe Assheton I* were the tellers for those who favoured more talks.102CJ vi. 93b. He clearly believed that a settlement might still be possible. That sealed their fate. The next morning the army purged the Commons. Given his role the previous day, there can never have been any doubt that Cranborne would be secluded.103A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). More surprising perhaps is that he was not one of those imprisoned. That may have owed much to his father’s influence.

Salisbury was eager that he and his son should not lose their rights at Theobalds when the Rump sold off the royal lands. It helped that from September 1649 Salisbury was sitting in the Rump as the MP for King’s Lynn. In April 1650 MPs acknowledged that the earl stood to suffer financial losses from the sale.104CJ vi. 398a-399a. Subsequent investigations confirmed that Cranborne had been the keeper, but in December 1651 Parliament only compensated Salisbury.105CJ vi. 404b-406b, vii. 56a-58a; Hatfield House, CFEP Accounts 46/5; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 423. Cranborne was no more successful when he tried to claim some of the English estates of the royalist 2nd duke of Hamilton. Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth, was the only other daughter of Cranborne’s late father-in-law, the 1st earl of Dirletoun, so Cranborne argued that the two of them had each inherited a half-share of Dirletoun’s estates in Surrey and Northumberland on the earl’s death in 1650. On that basis, Cranborne petitioned the Committee for Compounding in February 1651 suggesting that he should be allowed to lease the lands that comprised Hamilton’s share. Dirleton’s widow claimed that her late husband had mortgaged all those lands to others. The Committee for Compounding washed its hands of the matter, declaring that, as Hamilton’s sequestration had been discharged, this was now a matter for the law courts.106CCC, 2427.

By the late 1650s Cranborne’s debts had climbed to over £15,000.107Stone, Family and Fortune, 153. This forced him to flee to France to avoid his creditors. When two of his sons, Robert and James, obtained permission in the spring of 1658 to travel to France, they more than likely did so in order to visit him.108CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 552. If so, this was probably the last time they saw him. He was in Paris in June 1659.109HMC 15th Rep. VII, 161.

Cranborne died of cancer at Montpellier on 4/14 September 1659.110Hatfield House, CP 200/26. In a letter to his father on his deathbed he implored him to ‘have a care of my poor children, who for aught I know hath no mother so well as no father’. He also asked that his debts be paid, a rather optimistic instruction, because he hoped ‘that I may leave this world for a better with joy and the least scruple of conscience’. His last request was that provision be made for his loyal servant, Richard Sebrough, who had been with him for the past decade.111Hatfield House, CP 200/25. His body was brought back to England for burial, presumably at Hatfield, in 1661.112Hatfield House, CFEF 129/12, unfol. His eldest son, James, succeeded as the 3rd earl of Salisbury in 1668.