CECIL, David (c.1606-1643), of Wakerley, Northants.

The Cecil family had moved from the Welsh Marches to Stamford after the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and had first represented the borough in Parliament in 1504.18E. Butler, The Cecils [1964], 8-10; HP Commons 1422-1504, ‘David Cecil’. Cecil’s great-grandfather, Lord Burghley – secretary of state to Elizabeth I – had raised the family to national prominence, by which Cecil’s grandfather had profited with his creation as 1st earl of Exeter in 1605.19HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Sir William Cecil’; ‘Thomas Cecil’. His father – the earl’s second son – had represented Westminster in 1593, Peterborough in 1604 and Stamford in 1614 and 1621. He had established his principal residence at Wakerley, seven miles south west of Stamford on the Rutland border.20HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Richard Cecil’. After receiving a university education at Cambridge, Cecil travelled abroad and attended the riding school at Angers, France, at the same time as did Sir Philip Stapilton*. A report in 1624 that Cecil was intended for marriage with the daughter and heiress of the countess of Exeter, came to nothing.21PROB14/159, f. 125; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 168; Oxford DNB, ‘’Sir Thomas Smith’.

Cecil had probably had no more than two years’ experience in public office before his return for Peterborough to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640. He almost certainly owed his election to the influence of his uncle, the 2nd earl of Exeter, who owned the liberty of Peterborough.22Supra, ‘Peterborough’. Cecil was named to only one committee in this Parliament – a bill ‘concerning apparel’ – and made no recorded contribution to debate.23CJ ii. 8a. Upon the death without issue of his uncle on 6 July 1640, Cecil succeeded to the earldom of Exeter and with it the ownership of Burghley House.24Crummett, ‘The lay peers in Parliament’, 197. But he does not appear to have enjoyed the full trust of the king, for the privy council conferred the 2nd earl’s office of lord lieutenant of Northamptonshire upon the 1st earl of Peterborough.25PC2/52, f. 311. Exeter confirmed any doubts the government may have had in his loyalty by signing the petition of the twelve peers, which was presented to the king at York late that August, urging Charles to summon a Parliament for the redress of the commonwealth’s grievances.26LJ iv. 189a; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 639-41; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 520-1.

Although Cecil rarely attended the Lords in the Long Parliament, he enjoyed sufficient favour at Westminster to secure appointment as parliamentary lord lieutenant of Rutland under the Militia Ordinance of March 1642. His leading sponsor in the Commons was the radical firebrand Henry Marten.27PJ i. 350. But the earl would prove a poor choice as leader of Rutland’s parliamentarian interest, pleading ill health for his failure to execute the Militia Ordinance that summer and contenting himself (and apparently the Lords) with donating £500 towards raising troops in the county.28LJ v. 177b, 181a, 185a. This money aside, he seems to have contributed very little to the parliamentarian war effort either as a politician or soldier, and it has been surmised that he aligned with those in the Lords who favoured a swift, negotiated settlement with the king.29Crummett, ‘The lay peers in Parliament’, 267, 299, 367, 381-2, 405-6.

Exeter died at Exeter House in London on 18 April 1643 and was buried at St Martin’s, Stamford.30CP. In his will, drawn up on his deathbed, he expressed a wish to ‘disclaim all my own works and desire the Lord not to enter into judgement with me for the best of them, but to pardon my sins and infirmities for His son’s sake’.31PROB11/193, f. 42. The witnesses to his will included his and his wife’s spiritual counsellor, the godly Rutland minister Jeremiah Whitaker, and a certain Samuel Browne, who may well have been the Member for Dartmouth in the Long Parliament and (by 1646 at the latest) legal adviser to Exeter’s cousin once removed, the prominent parliamentarian peer William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury.32PROB11/193, f. 42v; S. Ashe, Living Loves Betwixt Christ and Dying Christians (1654), epistle dedicatory (E.482.3); J. Adamson, ‘Parliamentary management, men-of-business and the House of Lords, 1640-9’, in A Pillar of the Constitution ed. C. Jones (1989), 39; Oxford DNB, ‘Jeremiah Whitaker’; J. Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts: the Diocese of Peterborough 1603-42’ (Birmingham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1989), 28. Exeter was succeeded by his son John, a minor.