CECIL, Edward (1572-1638)

Cecil’s grandfather was the great Elizabethan minister William Cecil^†, 1st Lord Burghley. His father, Thomas Cecil^*, 2nd Lord Burghley, was created earl of Exeter in 1605. As a younger son Cecil can have had little expectation of joining the ranks of the peerage himself. After completing his education, which included a period of foreign travel, he pursued a military career in the Netherlands. He became a colonel in 1605 but, in the same year, fiercely opposed the appointment of Sir Horace Vere^* (later Lord Vere of Tilbury) as general of the English forces serving the Dutch republic, beginning a long standing feud between the two men. Cecil himself became a general when he commanded the English forces at the siege of Jülich in 1610, and afterwards retained that rank, but only as an honorary title, as he subsequently reverted to commanding a regiment again. In 1620 he was put forward by the favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (subsequently 1st duke) of Buckingham, as commander of the English volunteers raised to defend the Rhenish Palatinate, but in the event Cecil lost out to Vere.61 Trim, 188-9, 370; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 473; HORACE VERE.

The Cadiz expedition and the second Caroline Parliament, 1625-7

In May 1625 the lord admiral, Buckingham, now a duke, intended to lead an amphibious expedition against Spain, and offered Cecil the post of second in command. At the same time, he promised Vere a barony in compensation for being passed over. However, this provoked a furious response from Cecil. Writing to Buckingham on 19 July, he declared that he was Vere’s ‘equal in profession and before him in birth’ and that ennobling his colleague would make himself ‘less than I was’, which would hardly encourage him in the forthcoming expedition.62 Dalton, ii. 92; HORACE VERE; Cabala (1691), i. 169. The following September, though, Cecil’s anger was assuaged by the offer of a viscountcy. He decided on Wimbledon for his title, presumably because it was the site of his principal residence in England, inherited from his father.63 CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 162; HMC Cowper, i. 225; PROB 11/141, f. 181v. He later changed his mind, and asked be known as Viscount Latimer, thereby reviving the ‘ancient title’ of his maternal grandfather.64 HMC Cowper, i. 224-5. However, he left his request too late.

By the time Cecil was offered a peerage Buckingham had decided not to command the expedition himself, but to appoint Cecil instead. The latter thereby became, in the words of John Pory^‡, ‘general both by sea and land … [with] the greatest command that any subject had (he supposeth) these hundred years’, despite having never previously held an independent command or any experience of naval warfare. Although Cecil’s peerage was intended to bolster his authority in his new command, his patent was not issued until a month after the fleet left England. Moreover, the fact that he would soon become a viscount could not disguise the weakness of Cecil’s position. He lacked an independent commission to command the expedition, remaining officially Buckingham’s deputy, and was instructed to act only in accordance with advice of the other senior officers, over whom he lacked the kind of social and political eminence enjoyed by the duke.65 Dalton, ii. 119-20; Birch, i. 53; S.R. Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. vi. 12-13; S.J. Stearns, ‘Caroline Military System, 1625-7’ (Univ. of California, Berkeley Ph.D. thesis, 1967), 37.

The fleet left Plymouth on 8 Oct., but Cecil had little hope of success, having already procured a promise from the king, Charles I, that he would not be judged on the outcome of the expedition. Moreover, a letter written by him to Charles four days earlier appears to have been intended to exonerate him from any blame. He said that the fleet and army were both ‘full of wants and defects’, and complained that the soldiers were ‘raw men’. Moreover, the lateness of the year meant that the Spanish would have had plenty of time to prepare their defences, and left the ships vulnerable to storms. His pessimism was apparently shared by his senior officers, which may explain why dissension had already broken out between Cecil and his subordinates before the fleet’s departure. Both Cecil and his council of war would have wanted to ensure that blame for the expedition’s expected failure would fall on the other party.66 Stearns, 39-40; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 262; Dalton, ii. 143, 233; Stowe 176, f. 266; Cabala (1691), 371.

At Plymouth, Cecil’s council at war had agreed that the best target for the expedition was St Lucar, the port of Seville. However, when the fleet arrived off the coast of Spain on 22 Oct. the seamen advised that St Lucar was too risky. The council instead resolved to attempt a landing near Cadiz. When the fleet entered the bay of Cadiz they found that they had taken the Spanish shipping by surprise, but English hesitancy ensured that they failed to capture these valuable prizes.67 Stearns, 38, 42-3, 44. Moreover, rather than immediately attack Cadiz, Cecil initially focused on capturing Fort Puntal, situated on the narrow isthmus leading to the town. Having secured this objective, and on hearing reports of approaching enemy troops, he had his men march inland without adequate provisions, where they discovered, and quickly consumed, a large quantity of wine and became very drunk. The following day, Cecil marched his army back to Puntal, where, having lost any advantage of surprise and lacking equipment for a siege, he and his council of war agreed it was now too risky to attack Cadiz. Consequently, Cecil re-embarked his troops and set sail in the hope of intercepting the Plate fleet. However, this proved to be no more than an idle hope. On 17 Nov., with an infection having broken out among the men and the weather steadily worsening, the decision was made to return home.68 Ibid. 42-62, 358n.39.

The fleet’s flagship, battered by storms, was forced to take refuge in Kinsale on 11 Dec., where Cecil, now Viscount Wimbledon, remained until the following February.69 Dalton, ii. 193, 243. Mutual recriminations between Wimbledon and his subordinate commanders, particularly the vice admiral, Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, ensued, although most commentators blamed the expedition’s failure on Wimbledon himself.70 C115/108/8628; CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 82; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/E28; Birch, i. 77; Procs. 1626, iv. 306, 313. According to Chamberlain, the soldiers nicknamed him ‘Viscount Sitstill’.71 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 628.

His enforced stay in Ireland meant that Wimbledon missed the start of the 1626 Parliament. When the upper House was called on 15 Feb., he was excused attendance on account of being in the king’s service.72 Procs. 1626, i. 49. He did not arrive in London until 2 Mar., when it was reported that two of his subordinate officers, Henry West^*, 4th Lord De La Warr, and Henry Power, 1st Viscount Valentia [I], intended to lay complaints against him regarding his conduct during the expedition.73 Birch, i. 84. On 6 Mar. he appeared before the Privy Council, along with the colonels who had served on the expedition, where he ‘fell into a passion, saying, that never man was abused as he; … and that some had wished before departure that the voyage might rather not prosper than he should have the honour of it’. Only two of the ten colonels were willing to support him, as a result of which Joseph Mead reported that some observers thought it likely that Wimbledon would be found ‘not only to have had want of judgement, but to have been wilfully faulty’. However, Mead conceded that ‘others think he will come off easily enough’.74 Ibid. 87, 91.

Wimbledon was instructed to prepare a journal of the expedition, which task he had completed by 15 March.75 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 283. When this was read to the Council, the colonels, who were also present, attacked Wimbledon’s version of events, and were granted permission to draw up their own journal, which they prepared in conjunction with some of the naval officers. The resulting document, which amounted to an indictment of Wimbledon’s management of the expedition, was signed by Essex and nine other senior officers, although not by De La Warr.76 Cabala (1691), 317-2; Two Original Journals of Sir Richard Granville (1724), 1-29. Wimbledon responded by drawing up a detailed answer. He also launched personal attacks on his critics, among them De La Warr, who, he said, had ‘run on with the rest, rather for company, than for any cause’. Wimbledon was careful not to cast the blame primarily on Essex (his senior in the peerage), whom he described as the figurehead for his opponents, but ‘too noble to be the plotter of this business’. Instead he chose to identify the professional soldier, Sir Edward Harwood, as ‘the only plotter and contriver of all this business’. Thomas Cromwell^*, 4th Lord Cromwell, who, like De La Warr, had held a naval command in the expedition, was accused of neglecting his duties because ‘tobacco or sack were ever your companions’, while Sir Edward Conway^* (subsequently 2nd Viscount Conway), was accused of saying that he preferred that ‘the journey might fail, rather than my lord of Wimbledon should have any honour by it’.77 Two Original Journals of Sir Richard Granville, 30-56; Nottingham UL, NeC15406, pp. 417-18.

Despite the evidence presented by Wimbledon and his accusers, the Council never reached a conclusion on the conduct of the expedition. Wimbledon not surprisingly found this frustrating. Writing to Buckingham on 28 Apr., he complained that, although ‘the world is of opinion that I have your excellency’s favour’, he had not been formally exonerated or allowed access to the king. Nevertheless, he seems to have been willing to become a scapegoat for the duke, who was coming under mounting criticism himself in Parliament, for he went on: ‘if my suffering be to add any service to your affairs in these troublesome times … I will suffer any inconvenience, as I have, misery, danger, and decay of my fortunes, for your excellency’s sake’.78 Cabala (1691), 370-1, where the date is given as 1622. The letter is correctly dated 1626 in the 1654 edition.

The charges against Wimbledon presented Charles and Buckingham with a dilemma. There was much to criticize in Wimbledon’s conduct at Cadiz, particularly his precipitate march inland, which had taken place without even a preliminary reconnaissance to ascertain whether the report of approaching Spanish troops was accurate. However, as Wimbledon had been Buckingham’s appointee, the viscount’s deficiencies inevitably reflected on the duke. Moreover, although Wimbledon had made counter accusations against his critics of dereliction of duty, his defence essentially rested on the objections he had raised before he left: that the expedition had started too late in the year, against a forewarned enemy and that the forces at his disposal had been inadequate. This raised the question of why Charles and Buckingham had allowed it to proceed in the first place. It was therefore politically convenient to allow the inquiry into the expedition to lapse without coming to any conclusions.79 Gardiner, 18-19, 21-2; Stearns, 66-7, 71, 74; SP16/22/113. See also Cabala (1691), 371.

During the middle of this inquiry, on 9 Mar. 1626, Wimbledon was summoned before the Commons in his capacity as a member of the council of war appointed in 1624 to advise on the conduct of the war.80 Procs. 1626, ii. 240. The Lords had given permission to the councillors, who were member of the upper House, to attend the Commons a week before, but Wimbledon replied that, having also been summoned by the Privy Council, he would first need the latter’s permission. The lower House, dissatisfied with this response, ordered him to attend on 11 March.81 Ibid. i. 92; ii. 247, 252. On making their appearance, Wimbledon and the other councillors told the Commons that the king had ordered them not to reveal the advice they had given. Wimbledon may have wanted to say more, perhaps in the hope of vindicating himself, as he informed the lower House that ‘his heart and pen go not together’.82 Ibid. ii. 258. Moreover, in the preface to his journal recording the Cadiz expedition, he stated that the Commons was ‘an assembly I much reverenced: and I would be sad now that I am to leave that House, to be blemished’.83 Harl. 3638, f. 108.

On 5 Apr. John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, reported from the Lords’ committee for privileges that Wimbledon was among those who were absent without having sent a proxy.84 Procs. 1626, i. 256. It was not, however, until a fortnight later that Wimbledon made his first appearance in the upper House, and he did not attend again until 4 May, when he was formally brought in, one of his supporters being his elder brother, William Cecil^*, 2nd earl of Exeter.85 Ibid. 351. Subsequently he attended every sitting of the House except for those occurring on two days (3 and 14 June). He made only one brief speech, on 15 May, when he stated he had been absent when Sir Dudley Digges^‡ delivered his inflammatory preamble to the impeachment articles against Buckingham at a conference between the two Houses on 8 May. He received a solitary committee appointment, on 20 May, when he was added to the committee for safety and defence of the kingdom.86 Ibid. 478, 536.

During the Parliament Wimbledon lobbied Buckingham with a request to be made lord lieutenant of Surrey (where he was a deputy lieutenant) alongside the existing lieutenant, Charles Howard^*, 2nd earl of Nottingham. The duke was sympathetic, but said he ‘would not distemper a vote in Parliament upon such an occasion’. Unfortunately, it is not clear which vote he was referring to. Nevertheless, he promised that no one else would be appointed over Wimbledon’s head. However, in September 1626, Wimbledon furiously complained to Buckingham that two unnamed noblemen were about to be placed above him. His protest seems to have blocked these appointments, for Nottingham remained sole lord lieutenant until Wimbledon joined him in early 1627.87 SP16/524/130.

Wimbledon was not offered a command when a second expedition to Spain, led by Robert Bertie^*, 14th Lord Willoughby (later 1st earl of Lindsey), was assembled in the spring and summer of 1626, suggesting that, in reality, Charles and Buckingham had accepted the criticisms levelled against his conduct in 1625. Nevertheless, in May 1626, Wimbledon was appointed to a new council of war which had replaced the earlier body established in 1624. He assiduously attended council meetings, at least initially, and was frequently appointed to its committees.88 SP16/28, ff. 1-18, 26v-7, 29, 89. Likewise, in December 1626, he was placed on the commission established in the wake of the failure of Willoughby’s expedition to carry out a detailed examination of the state of the Navy. However, he was not as active on this body as he was on the council of war.89 SP16/45, passim. Perhaps his most important contribution to the war effort was to act as intermediary between his brother-in-law, Nicholas Tufton^* (subsequently 1st earl of Thanet) on the one hand and Buckingham on the other regarding the former’s purchase of a peerage in October 1626, the proceeds from which helped fund four regiments sent to assist the king of Denmark.90 Dalton, ii. 264; E403/2981, p. 267. The following January Wimbledon himself paid £100 towards the Forced Loan.91 E401/1386, rot. 46.

It was probably in early 1627 that Wimbledon drew up (either for the council of war or for Buckingham) a paper ‘of the commodities and discommodities of undertaking and relieving’ La Rochelle, whose Protestant inhabitants were now besieged by their Catholic king. He argued that war with France should be welcomed because it would mean that, following the long years of peace, England’s monarch would start to ‘breed his subjects soldiers again’. He praised La Rochelle as ‘an extraordinary strong place both by nature and situation’, the relief of which ‘will advantage his Majesty every way’ and would provide a means to disrupt the build up of the French navy. Although he conceded that it was ‘a great discommodity’ to make war on France while the conflict with Spain was continuing, he thought that Savoy could be brought into the conflict to aid England and that France was ‘never wanting some discontented nobility or other’ ready to make trouble. This was particularly so now given the widespread domestic opposition to Cardinal Richelieu.92 Dalton, ii. 394-401.

Return to the Netherlands and the third Caroline Parliament, 1627-9

By early 1627 Wimbledon had been absent from the Netherlands, where he still commanded a regiment, for about a year and a half. Moreover, the prince of Orange was preparing to go on the offensive in the summer, making the viscount’s return to his command imperative. In March 1627 he therefore received a pass to return to his regiment in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, he remained in England, attempting to obtain his back-pay, amounting to £3,344, until the Dutch army took to the field in June. Shortly before his departure, the Privy Council ordered that he be satisfied; however, he failed to secure payment before he left England.93 APC, 1627, pp. 157, 339; Dalton, ii. 268, 272-3, 280-1.

Wimbledon commanded the English forces at the successful siege of Groll in the summer of 1627.94 HMC Cowper, i. 315; C115/107/8531. At the same time he wrote to Buckingham, then commanding the English army on the Île de Ré, advising him to lift the siege of the citadel of St Martin and make an orderly withdrawal, the French having successfully re-supplied the fort. However, it is not clear whether this letter ever reached the duke. Wimbledon took the opportunity of this letter to press for the payment of what he was owed, claiming that, had he received his arrears, he would have served Buckingham as a volunteer.95 Dalton, ii. 278-81. By October he had returned to England, when he attended the funeral of Sir John Borough, one of the Cadiz colonels, who had been killed on the Île de Ré. This was despite the fact that Borough had been one of his critics, and even though Wimbledon had accused him of attempting to embezzle seven barrels of captured cochineal.96 Regs. Westminster Abbey ed. J.L. Chester, 126; Birch, i. 281; Nottingham UL, NeC15406, pp. 418-19. The following February, for reasons which remain unclear, he was appointed to the Privy Council.

During the 1628 session of Parliament Wimbledon is recorded as having attended 76 per cent of the sittings of the upper House (71 out of 94). This was despite intermittent poor health, which kept him from the call of the House on 22 Mar., and which led to him being excused attendance a further nine times.97 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 87. Over the course of the session he helped to introduce four new viscounts to the House, namely Paul Bayning^*, 1st Viscount Bayning; Edward Conway^*, 1st Viscount Conway; Robert Pierrepont^*, Viscount Newark (later 1st earl of Kingston-upon-Hull); and Baptist Hicks^*, 1st Viscount Campden. However, he was named to only four of the 52 committees appointed by the Lords. These included the privileges’ committee, to which he was added on 8 April.98 Ibid. 74, 167, 344, 394.

Wimbledon made six recorded speeches during the 1628 session, most of them on military matters. On 7 Apr. he intervened twice in the debate following Francis Russell^*, 4th earl of Bedford’s report of the bill for standardizing arms, an issue which had concerned him in the Commons in 1621. He was particularly concerned to promote the use of calivers, a kind of light musket he thought suitable for young men and useful for protecting pikemen.99 Ibid. 159, 160, 161. In addition, he addressed two objections to the saltpetre bill when it received its first reading, on 3 May, namely ‘novelty’ and ‘the price’, although it is not clear if he was speaking in favour of the measure or against it.100 Ibid. 374. Bedford’s commonplace book includes an undated speech or piece of advice given by Wimbledon about the use of martial law, possibly relating to the debates concerning the liberties of the subject.101 Ibid. 725. However, the only time Wimbledon is recorded as having spoken about the Petition of Right was on 10 May, when he unsuccessfully opposed a further conference with the Commons, arguing that the Lords should not ‘court’ the lower House.102 Ibid. 480, 487.

Wimbledon’s long years in the Dutch republic, famous for its numerous hospitals, almshouses and workhouses, probably prompted his speech at the second reading of the bill for the better maintenance of hospitals and almshouses, on 4 April. He called for the establishment of a workhouse on Dutch lines, which would be ‘a nursery to bring up youth to take away beggary … where they neither whip nor beat’. He was subsequently named to the committee.103 Ibid. 151, 153; J.I. Israel, Dutch Republic, 353-55. On 19 Apr. he was appointed to consider the bill to naturalize Alexander Levingston, a Scottish equerry of Henrietta Maria, which he successfully reported without amendment later the same day.104 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 293; Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in Eng. and Ire. ed. W.A. Shaw (Huguenot Soc. of London, xviii), 40. The assistant clerk’s rough notes includes mention of ‘Viscount Wimbledon’s bill’ under the entries for 21 May, but nothing is known about this measure.105 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 495.

On 31 July Wimbledon received a pass to rejoin his regiment in the Low Countries, but in mid September, following the assassination of Buckingham on 23 Aug., he decided to return to England, ‘not desiring to be absent upon these alterations’.106 APC, 1628-9, p. 69; SP84/138, f. 20v. On 20 Oct. Wimbledon was one of the commissioners who prorogued the Parliament until January.107 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 229. The following month he suffered a double misfortune. On the 18th a maid opened a barrel of gunpowder, apparently thinking it contained soap, in the cellar of his Wimbledon house. A spark from her candle ignited the powder causing an explosion which destroyed the woman, eight rooms and Wimbledon’s papers. The following day Wimbledon’s house in the Strand, then let to the Dutch ambassador, burnt down, possibly because the inhabitants had been ‘excessively merry’ celebrating Piet Heyn’s capture of the Plate fleet, the target which had eluded Wimbledon three years earlier.108 Birch, i. 433, 334-5; C115/107/8533.

During the 1629 parliamentary session Wimbledon was recorded as attending nine sittings of the upper House between the start of the session on 20 Jan. and 10 Feb. inclusive. In that time he was excused on three occasions; he was otherwise absent only once. After being again excused on 14 Feb., he was marked as present at just one further sitting, the last, on 10 March. Consequently, in total, he attended only 43 per cent of the sittings (10 out of 23). His only nomination was to be reappointed to the privileges committee. He made no recorded speeches.109 LJ, iv. 6a.

Later life, 1629-38

In April Wimbledon returned to the Netherlands, where he took part in the siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc).110 APC, 1628-9, p. 409; Dalton, ii. 291-7. He returned to the Low Countries for the last time in 1631 but fell out of favour, possibly because of a dispute with the Dutch government over compensation for the burning of his house in the Strand. He was formally replaced as colonel of his regiment in early 1632.111 APC, 1630-1, p. 341; Dalton, ii. 310-13.

During the early 1630s Wimbledon became increasingly involved in English domestic administration. He was the most active councillor on the commission to investigate exacted fees, and claimed responsibility for having brought the issue to Buckingham’s attention.112 G.E. Aylmer, ‘Charles I’s Commission on Fees’, BIHR, xxi. 62; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 259; 1634-5, p. 419. In November 1630 he presented proposals to the king concerning reform of the poor laws. These have not survived, but they may have envisaged the establishment of workhouses along the lines that Wimbledon had advocated in the Lords in 1628. They were referred to a committee of the Council that, in turn, drew up the 1631 Book of Orders. However, it was Henry Montagu^*, 1st earl of Manchester, who was principally responsible for drafting this document and who led the commission, of which Wimbledon was a member, charged with enforcing these orders.113 APC, 1630-1, p. 111; B.W. Quintrell, ‘Making of Charles I’s Bk. of Orders’, EHR, xcv. 557-8.

Wimbledon’s interest in domestic policy was partly self interested. In a petition sent to the king for the payment of £4,465 which he claimed he was owed by the crown, Wimbledon asserted that as a result of his work on the commission for exacted fees ‘your Majesty’s coffers hath already received good profit it’. In a further petition he requested a grant of any new ‘revenue of land’ which he could discover.114 Dalton, ii, 338-9. It may have been Wimbledon who was behind a project to raise money from alehouses, possibly by licensing them, which was reportedly ‘laid asleep’ in April 1631.115 Birch, ii. 107. In about 1637 he certainly drew up a proposal to introduce tolls on domestic trade to raise money for fortifications, arguing that the crown had the power to levy taxes without the consent of the people for the common good.116 CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 81.

Wimbledon drew up his will on 1 Nov. 1635, which date appears in the text (though the heading states that it was written in 1637). He requested that his body ‘be not opened or mangled’ but be promptly ‘as deep buried in the earth as may be’ in the chapel he had built in Wimbledon parish church. His bequests included £20 to apprentice poor children from Wimbledon, on condition that the parish maintain his tomb.117 PROB 11/178, f. 528r-v. He attended the Privy Council for the last time, on 15 July 1638, and died four months later.118 PC2/49, p. 330. He was buried at Wimbledon where a black marble monument was erected with a viscount’s crown suspended from the ceiling on a chain.119 CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 106-7; D. Lysons, Environs of London, i. 531. Being without male heirs, his peerage became extinct and his lands were divided between his four surviving daughters, who sold Wimbledon House to Henrietta Maria.120 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 157. His sons-in-law included Francis Willoughby^†, 4th (CP 5th) Lord Willoughby of Parham, and James Fiennes^†, 2nd Viscount Saye and Sele.