BURGHLEY, WILLIAM CECIL, BARON was born, according to his own statement, on Sept. 13, 1520, at Bourne, Lincolnshire, son of Richard Cecil (see CECIL).
William was put to school first at Grantham and then at Stam ford. In May 1535, at the age of 14, he went up to St. John's college, Cambridge, where he was brought into contact with the foremost educationists of the time, Roger Ascham and John Cheke. There he fell deeply in love with Cheke's sister, Mary, and was in 1541 removed by his father to Gray's Inn, without, after six years' residence at Cambridge, having taken a degree. The precaution proved useless, and four months later Cecil committed one of the rare rash acts of his life in marrying Mary Cheke. The only child of this marriage, Thomas, the future earl of Exeter, was born in May 1542, and in February Cecil's first wife died. Three years later he married (Dec. 21, 1546) Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, who was ranked by Ascham with Lady Jane Grey as one of the two most learned ladies in the kingdom, and whose sister, Anne, became the wife of Sir Nicholas, and the mother of Sir Francis Bacon.
Cecil, meanwhile, had obtained the reversion to the office of custos rotulorum brevium, and, according to his autobiographical notes, sat in parliament in ; but his name does not occur in the imperfect parliamentary returns until 1547, when he was elected for the family borough of Stamford. Earlier in that year he had accompanied Protector Somerset on his Pinkie campaign, being one of the two "judges of the Marshalsea," i.e., in the courts-martial.
In 1548 he is described as the protector's master of requests, and was involved in the latter's fall (Oct. . In November he was in the Tower, and on Jan. 25, 1550, he was bound over in recognizances to the value of a thousand marks. However, he soon ingratiated himself with Warwick, and on Sept. 15, 1550, he was sworn one of the king's two secretaries, and was knighted on Oct. I1, 1551. But service under Northumberland was no bed of roses. His responsibility for Edward's illegal "devise" of the Crown has been studiously minimized by Cecil himself and by his biographers. Years afterwards, he pretended that he had only signed the "devise" as a witness. There is no doubt that he saw which way the wind was blowing, and disliked Northumberland's scheme; but he had not the courage to resist the duke to his face. As soon, however, as the duke had set out to meet Mary, Cecil became the most active intriguer against him, and to these efforts, of which he laid a full account before Queen Mary, he mainly owed his immunity. He had, moreover, had no part in the divorce of Catherine or in the humiliation of Mary in Henry's reign, and he made no scruple about conforming to the religious reaction. It was rumoured in Dec. 1554 that Cecil would succeed Sir William Petre as secretary, an office which, with his chancellorship of the Garter, he had lost on Mary's accession. Probably the queen had more to do with the falsification of this rumour than Cecil, though he is said to have opposed in the parliament of which he represented Lincolnshire—a bill for the confiscation of the estates of the Protestant refugees.
Cecil was in secret communication with Elizabeth before Mary died, and from the first the new queen relied on Cecil as she relied on no one else. Cecil was exactly the kind of minister England then required. A via media had to be found in Church and State, at home and abroad. Cecil was eminently a safe man, not an original thinker, but a counsellor of unrivalled wisdom. Caution was his supreme characteristic ; he saw that above all things England required time. Like Fabius, he restored the fortunes of his country by deliberation. He averted open rupture until Eng land was strong enough to stand the shock. There was nothing heroic about Cecil or his policy; it involved a callous attitude towards struggling Protestants abroad. But Cecil never de veloped that passionate aversion from decided measures which became a second nature to his mistress. His intervention in Scotland in showed that he could strike on occasion; and his action over the execution of Mary, queen of Scots, proved that he was willing to take responsibility from which Elizabeth shrank. Generally he was in favour of more decided intervention on behalf of Continental Protestants than Elizabeth would admit.
His share in the Anglican settlement of 1559 was consider able, and it coincided fairly with his own somewhat indeterminate religious views. Like the mass of the nation, he grew more Prot estant as time wore on ; he was readier to persecute Papists than Puritans; he had no love for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and he warmly remonstrated with Whitgift over his persecuting Articles of 1583. The finest encomium was passed on him by the queen herself when she said, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the State." Of personal incident, apart from his mission to Scotland in 156o, there is little during the long reign of Elizabeth. He repre sented Lincolnshire in the parliament of 1559, and Northampton shire in that of 1563, and he took an active part in the House of Commons until his elevation to the peerage ; but there seems no good evidence for the story that he was proposed as speaker in 1563. In Feb. 1559 he was elected chancellor of Cambridge uni versity in succession to Cardinal Pole. In 1571 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Burghley of Burghley (or Burleigh) ; the fact that he continued to act as secretary after his elevation illustrates the growing importance of that office, which under his son became a secretaryship of state. In 1572, however, the mar quess of Winchester, who had been lord high treasurer under Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, died, and Burghley succeeded to his post. It was a signal triumph over Leicester; and, although Burghley had still to reckon with cabals in the council and at court, his hold over the queen strengthened with the lapse of years. • Before he died, Robert, his only surviving son by his second wife, was ready to step into his shoes as the queen's principal adviser. Having survived all his rivals, and all his children except Robert and Thomas, Burghley died at his London house on Aug. 4, 1598, and was buried in St. Martin's, Stamford.
Burghley's private life was singularly virtuous; he was a faith ful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book lover and antiquary, he made a special hobby of heraldry and genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of architecture and horticulture were lavished on Burghley House and Theobalds, which his son exchanged for Hatfield.
The most important collection of documents connected with Burgh ley is at Hatfield, where there are some ten thousand papers covering the period down to Burghley's death ; these have been calendared in eight volumes by the Hist. mss. Comm. At least as many others are in the Record Office and British Museum, the Lansdowne mss. especially containing a vast mass of his correspondence ; see the catalogues of Cotton, Harleian, Royal, Sloane, Egerton and Additional mss. in the British Museum, and the Calendars of Domestic, Foreign, Spanish, Venetian, Scottish and Irish State Papers.