The Cecils: Privilege and Power Behind the Throne

by David Loades

For over 50 years, one family dominated England’s high offices of state. William and Robert Cecil, father and son, held unparalleled power as statesmen, diplomats, counselors and spymasters throughout Elizabeth’s reign and long beyond. From Privy Councillor to Chief Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer, both exerted far-reaching influence to secure the Queen’s realm and legacy. They enjoyed her reliance and trust, and Robert the gratitude of her successor James I, yet each inhabited a perilous world where favor brought enemies and a wrong step could lead to disaster.

In The Cecils, leading Tudor historian David Loades reveals the personal and political lives of these remarkable men. He shows how father and son negotiated volatile court life, battling flamboyant favorites like Robert Dudley and the ill-fated Earl of Essex and playing for time to stabilize a country still torn by religious divide. He discovers the contradictory characters of these advocates of caution who nevertheless took great person risks, such as William’s role in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and Robert’s secret negotiations with James VI of Scotland before Elizabeth’s death. Yet these principled public servants—who put the interests of the State before their ownstill amassed large personal wealth, and relished its display at their great houses of Burghley, Theobalds and Hatfield. This is a fascinating portrait of men who shaped an extraordinary age.

Genres: History, Tudor Period, Nonfiction, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2007

About the author

David Michael Loades was a British historian who specialised in the Tudor era. After military service in the Royal Air Force from 1953 until 1955, Loades studied at the University of Cambridge. In the 1960s and 1970s he taught at the universities of St. Andrews and Durham. From 1980 until 1996 Loades was Professor of History at the University of Wales; after taking emeritus status, Loades served as Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield from 1996 until 2008.

Reviews

[Janet Wertman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw one of the other reviews called this “easy to read but unsatisfying” … and that pretty much sums it up. Yes, lots of info but I hoped for (and, truthfully, expected) more

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1136503.html[return][return]Further to my secondary research on the Elizabethan period, here is a biography of William and Robert Cecil, respectively Lord Burghley and Earl of Salisbury, who were the chief ministers of Elizabeth I and James I, and established stability while overseeing England's first ever peaceful transition between reigning dynasties.[return][return]The Cecils, like the Tudors, were minor Welsh-speaking gentry who moved to England and made good. Loades asserts that they shared with the Tudors a sympathy for the urban middle classes rather than the House of Lords. It's an interesting assertion, but unfortunarely he doesn't source it and the evidence he provides isn't terribly substantial. But it is worth bearing in mind as we read about the Queen and her leading counsellor that they were indeed dynastic parvenus, whose ancestors were not aristocrats.[return][return]We get a very good picture of Cecil as super-efficient administrator and courtier, playing the game and playing it well. Loades is vigorously revisionist in places: he detects no long-standing rivalry between Cecil and Dudley once it became clear that the Queen was not going to marry the latter, and goes out of his way to rehabilitate the reputation of Thomas, William's first son and Robert's elder brother. (Which inclines me to take his assertion about the Tudors' social instincts more seriously.)[return][return]I was already pretty familiar with the general outline of the history from other recent reading, but Loades added some interesting extra details - notably on the astonishing career of Mary, Queen of Scots, whose catastrophic failure as a ruler resulted in her becoming one of William Cecil's more burdensome dossiers. Frankly if her story were written as a novel it would be difficult to believe. Another topic that was new to me was the weird political and economic consequences of the state's support of piracy against Spain.[return][return]Ireland, once again, features only as an occasional source of backgroud trouble, and then the scene of the disastrous end of Essex's career, which I now realise was probably the biggest impact Ireland had on English politics between 1399 (the fall of Richard II) and 1641 (the Phelim O'Neill rising and massacres). No particular quotes from or about William Cecil's Irish friend Nicholas White, but I was able to fill in one gap: White is said to have been a tutor in Cecil's household in the 1550s. This must presumably have been to the older son, Thomas, who was born in 1542 (the next child, Anne, was not born until 1556 - she grew up to disastrously marry the Earl of Oxford, who didn't write the works of Shakespeare); Thomas was sent to Camnridge in 1558 and then to the Continent in 1561. Robert was not born until 1562, by which time White was launched into his Irish political career.[return][return]Anyway, good solid stuff.

[April Munday · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy to read, but unsatisfying biography of William and Robert Cecil. Most of the book is devoted to Sir William and one of the chapters about Sir Robert is dominated by the exploits and execution of the Earl of Essex. Even Sir Robert's uncovering of the Gunpowder Plot is portrayed as something a schoolboy could have done, rather than something that required one of the greatest minds of the age to unravel. The plot takes up just over two pages of the book, but it deserves more.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid history of the two most famous Cecils in Tudor history - William and his son Robert. This book provides lots of information about what made these two most remarkable administrators the power behind the Elizabethan throne. Lots of additional information about the main events of the time including the development of trade, political intrigue in Europe and the power play of various courtiers. I like reading about the wider circles of political intrigue.

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I purchased this book with high hopes, having just come from a visit to Hatfield House and having read Shakespeare by Another Name by Mark Anderson (a fabulous book). My appetite was whetted for knowing as much as possible about William Cecil, and by extension, his daughter Anne, who was married to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (who was the true author behind the canon of the works attributed to "William Shakespeare").

Just before reading this book, I received and read The Cecils of Hatfield House by David Cecil, a descendant of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. It was everything and more I could have wished, eloquently composed and interesting. The segments about the branch of the family I was most interested in were, sadly, shorter than I might have wished.

David Loades' manner of speaking of William Cecils' daughters from page nine made me wince from ambiguity: "His daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, taxed his love in different ways." This is in keeping with Loades' defamatory style of describing all the Cecils, reminding me very much of Christopher Hitchens, although Loades is not so bold as to call Anne Cecil a slut or a whore, which Hitchens might have done. Instead Loades claims this girl educated in Britain's foremost school was neither beautiful nor learned.

This, he writes, of a young woman who was betrothed to first one (Sir Philip Sydney), then another (Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and lifetime rival of the former) of England's greatest budding literary talents. Note, by contrast, Anderson's eloquent testimony to the esteem in which she was held by others upon her death: "His [Edward De Vere's] silence and apparent distance are made all the more remarkable by the effusion of memorial verse that Anne's death generated. At least twenty in memoriam tributes were written--in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew--by as many different authors. Furthermore, since Burghley was clearly distraught by the loss of his favorite daughter. . . "

Loades must be the world's worst sleuth. I didn't know before writing this that he has so many earned academic titles; all I can suspect is he wanted to make a splash by deriding truly amazing people and he manages to show his ignorance and inability to make any connections whatsoever. Geez, how boring is that? Once I realized something was terribly amiss with this book, I completely lost the desire to read any more. How can I trust an author who has an attitude that poisons what should be a beautiful effort, helping the reader to understand history?

History is so ill taught because of authors like this. Sad!

[Toby Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

William and Robert Cecil dominated political life throughout the reign of Elizabeth I and Robert continued the family's hold on Court life into the reign of her successor James I. The book explores not only their public roles, but looks behind the scenes at their often volatile relationship, a really fascinating insight.

[Andrea]

So much looking forward to this. Lord William Cecil, my historical spirit animal.

Ordered from Alibris, 5/30/2016. Coming from Midtown Scholars Bookstore, Pennsylvania.

Arrived 6/4/2016, perfectly packaged, by the way. Looks excellent.