The Cecils of Hatfield House: A Portrait of an English Ruling Family

by David Cecil

Written "from the inside" by the younger son of the 4th marquess of Salisbury, who grew up within the walls where Elizabeth I and her brother, Edward VI, played as children; the Queen gave the property to her first chief minister, William Lord Burghley, who passed it on to her second chief minister, Robert Burghley, 1st earl of Salisbury. This absorbing dynastic biography should be read (like Altschul's book on the Clares) as a case study on the the changeable fortunes of a powerful noble family.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Tudor Period

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A effective history of an important Tudor family, written "from the inside" by the younger son of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury, who grew up within the walls where Elizabeth I and her brother, Edward VI, played as children. (The late Lord David was also a professor of English literature at Oxford and a noted author.) Queen Elizabeth later gave the property to her first chief minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who passed it on to her second chief minister, Robert Burghley, 1st Earl of Salisbury. The 3rd marquess was prime minister for a decade and a half and one of his sons, Lord Robert Cecil, was instrumental in establishing the League of Nations. Since the author was born at the turn of the 20th century, the later chapters of the book concern those members of the family with whom he was personally acquainted and his observations and anecdotes provide a splendid sense of time and place.

Equally interesting is the author’s affectionate description of Hatfield House itself, a place filled with almost four centuries of history and artifacts, from Elizabeth’s straw hat and silk stockings, Mary Tudor’s wedding crystal and the oak cradle of Charles I, to the pen with which Disraeli and Bismarck signed the Treaty of Berlin, and the Muniment Room, filled with both family papers and documents of state (which a minister kept as personal papers in the days before a Public Record Office). This absorbing dynastic biography should be read (like Altschul’s book on the Clares) as a case study on the the changeable fortunes of a powerful noble family.

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hatfield House was built in 1611, & has for over 300 yrs remained the home of the Cecils, a family which at various times has held the destiny of the country in it's hands. Lord David Cecil was raised at Hatfield and knows intimately the house and it's history. Lord David Cecil keeps in perspective four centuries of English history without overcrowding his canvas, yet presents his protagonists in detail that is sharp, affectionate and memorable. Contains numerous photographs.

Cover image; Portrait of Robert Cecil by John de Critz the Elder.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book is like being shown around a historic house and hearing the stories of each portrait from the room guide, with the additional piquancy that the guide in this case, with his favourites, his speculations, and his quick imagination of the past, is himself a member of the family talking about his ancestors' past. As David Cecil himself admits, the section of the book that deals with those members of the family whom he knew personally, even if only as a small boy, is somewhat different in flavour from that in which he discusses those whom he can discover only from archives, portraits, and family tradition, and I preferred the earlier material; but that may be because the lives of those modern-day Cecils, however talented they may have been, were ultimately largely ineffectual. He doesn't pretend to write as a dispassionate historian, but his uncles, shorn of the costumed glamour that attends even the avowedly unremarkable Georgian ancestors, are no more compelling than anyone else's eccentric relatives.

The book benefits from a wide selection of portrait reproductions, although the constraints of colour plates means that they sometimes occur well in advance of any reference to their subject in the text and have to be turned back to later - as with portraits in picture galleries, it's amazing how much more interesting a face immediately becomes as soon as it has a description to go with it! And from a professional author and academic, it is of course beautifully written as well as being entertaining and accessible. The inscription on the first page tells me that it was a gift from my father to my mother, whom I imagine would greatly have appreciated it.

[Helene Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review - An engaging look into the history of both Hatfield House, childhood home of Elizabeth I, and the Cecil family (the most famous being William Cecil Lord Burghley, chief minister of Elizabeth I). It's interesting to see how the two run together, right up to the present day when the house is still under the ownership of the Cecil family. Of course, the house is not the same one which Elizabeth I knew, having been built under James I, but there is still so much of the original Elizabethan history there.

General Subject/s? - History / Architecture

Recommend? – Yes

Rating - 16/20

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

HARDBOUND ED