Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

Under Elizabeth

Cecil became an MP, elected to represent Westminster in 1584 and 1586 and Hertfordshire in 1589, 1593, 1597 and 1601.^[11] He was made a Privy Councillor in 1593 and was leader of the Council by 1597.^[12]

Following the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Burghley acted as Secretary of State, while Cecil took on an increasingly heavy work-load. He was also appointed to the Privy Council in 1591. He became the leading minister after the death of his father in 1598, serving both Queen Elizabeth and King James as Secretary of State.^[1]

Cecil fell into dispute with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and only prevailed at Court upon the latter's poor campaign against the Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1599. He was then in a position to orchestrate the smooth succession of King James, maintaining a secret correspondence with him. Essex's unsuccessful rebellion in 1601, which resulted in his final downfall and death, was largely aimed at Cecil, who was to be removed from power and impeached. Whether Essex intended that Cecil should actually die is unclear.^[13]

It is to Cecil's credit that the Queen, largely at his urging, treated the rebels with a degree of mercy which was unusual in that age. Essex himself and four of his closest allies were executed, but the great majority of his followers were spared: even Essex's denunciation of his sister Penelope, Lady Rich as the ringleader of the rebellion was tactfully ignored. This clemency did him no good in the eyes of the public, who had loved Essex and mourned him deeply. Cecil, who had never been very popular, now became a much hated figure. In ballads like Essex's Last Good Night, Cecil was viciously attacked.^[14]

The Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I at Hatfield House has been seen as reflecting Cecil's role as spymaster after the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, due to the eyes and ears in the pattern of the dress.^[15]

Cecil was extensively involved in matters of state security. As the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal minister and a protégé of Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth's principal spymaster), he was trained by them in spycraft as a matter of course. The "Rainbow portrait" of Queen Elizabeth, decorated with eyes and ears, may relate to this role.

Cecil, like his father, greatly admired the Queen, whom he famously described as being "more than a man, but less than a woman".^[16] Despite his careful preparations for the succession, he clearly regarded the Queen's death as a misfortune to be postponed as long as possible. During her last illness, when Elizabeth would sit motionless on cushions for hours on end, Cecil boldly told her that she must go to bed. Elizabeth roused herself one last time to snap at him:

"Must is not a word to be used to princes, little man... your late father were he here would never had dared to speak such a word to me"; but she added wryly "Ah, but ye know that I must die, and it makes you presumptuous".^[17]

Under King James I

Sir Robert Cecil had promoted James as successor to Elizabeth,^[18] and the new monarch expressed his gratitude elevating Cecil to the peerage.^[19] Cecil also served as both the third chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin,^[20] and chancellor of the University of Cambridge,^[21] between 1601 and 1612.

In 1603, his brothers-in-law, Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham and Sir George Brooke, along with Sir Walter Raleigh, were implicated in both the Bye Plot and the Main Plot, an attempt to remove King James I from the throne and replace him with his first cousin, Lady Arbella Stuart. Cecil was one of the judges who tried them for treason: at Raleigh's trial, Cecil was the only judge who appeared to have some doubts about his guilt (which is still a matter of debate, although the prevailing view now is that Raleigh was involved in the Plot to some extent).^[22] Though they were found guilty and sentenced to death, both Cobham and Raleigh were reprieved at the last minute; this may have been due in part to Cecil's pleas for mercy, although the King kept his intentions a secret until the very last minute.^[23]

King James I raised Robert Cecil to the Peerage, on 20 August 1603, as Baron Cecil of Essendon in the County of Rutland, before creating him Viscount Cranborne in 1604, and then Earl of Salisbury in 1605.^[24] Salisbury was appointed to the Order of the Garter as its 401st Knight in 1606.^[11] In 1607, James appointed him as Lord Treasurer, succeeding Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset.^[25]

Although King James I would often speak disparagingly of Salisbury as "my little beagle", he gave him his absolute trust. "Though you are but a little man, I shall shortly load your shoulders with business", the King joked to him at their first meeting. Salisbury, who had endured a lifetime of jibes about his height (even Queen Elizabeth had called him "pygmy" and "little man"; he had a curvature of the spine and was barely 5 feet (1.5 m) tall), is unlikely to have found the joke funny, while the crushing weight of business with which the King duly loaded him probably hastened his death at the age of 48.^[26]

Salisbury was the principal discoverer of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605: at what point he first learned of it, and to what extent he acted as an agent provocateur, has been a subject of controversy ever since.^[27][28] On balance, it seems most likely that he had heard rumours of a plot, but had no firm evidence until the Catholic peer, William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, showed him the celebrated anonymous letter, warning Monteagle to stay away from the opening of Parliament. The Gunpowder Plot itself was a belated reaction to what was seen as the King's betrayal of a pledge to repeal, or at least mitigate, the Penal Laws. Salisbury was undoubtedly among those who advised King James I not to tamper with the existing laws.^[29] However, his attitude to Roman Catholics was not, for the time, especially harsh: he admitted that he was unhappy with the notorious Jesuits, etc. Act 1584, by which any Catholic priest who was found guilty of acting as a priest in England was liable to the death penalty in its most gruesome form. Like most moderate Englishmen at the time, he thought that exile, rather than death, was the appropriate penalty for the priests.^[30]

Quartered arms of Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, KG.

In 1606, the Earl of Salisbury entertained King James I and his brother-in-law, King Christian IV of Denmark, at his Hertfordshire house, Theobalds Palace (Theobalds House), under the sardonic eye of Queen Elizabeth's godson, Sir John Harrington. Both monarchs were notoriously heavy drinkers, and according to some of those present, the occasion was simply an orgy of drunkenness, as few English or Danish courtiers had their rulers' capacity to hold their drink. According to Harrington, the masque put on to honour the two kings was a drunken fiasco: "the entertainment and show went forward, and most of the players went backward, or fell down, wine did so occupy their upper chambers". Later in 1607, King James took possession of Theobalds Palace, giving Salisbury the Royal Palace of Hatfield in exchange.^[31] That palace was a relatively old-fashioned property that the King disliked. Salisbury, who had a disposition for building, tore down parts of it and used its bricks to build Hatfield House. Work continued on the House until 1612.^[32] Also in the early 17th century, he remodelled Cranborne Manor, originally a hunting lodge, and built Salisbury House (also referred to as Cecil House), his London residence on the Strand.^[33]

The Cecil family fostered arts: they supported musicians such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Robinson.^[34] Byrd composed his famous pavane The Earle of Salisbury in his memory. Robert Cecil's motto was "Sero, sed serio", which can be translated as 'late but in earnest'.^[35]

The Kingdom of Ireland was a major source of concern and expense during Salisbury's time in government. The Nine Years' War there had ended with the leader of the rebels, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, submitting to the Crown and being restored to his estates, following the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). Four years later, Tyrone had led his followers into exile during the Flight of the Earls. The response of the government was to plan a Plantation of Ulster, to share out Tyrone's lands between the Gaelic Irish lords and the settlers from Britain. In 1608, Sir Cahir O'Doherty launched O'Doherty's rebellion by attacking and burning Derry. In the wake of O'Doherty's defeat at Kilmacrennan, a much larger plantation was undertaken.

In 1610–11, Salisbury worked hard to persuade Parliament to enact the Great Contract, under which the King would give up all his feudal and customary sources of revenue (wardship and purveyance) in return for a fixed annual income of approximately £300,000.^[36][37] The rationale was that the king was spending extravagantly, putting the kingdom into debt. By 1608, the debt was £1.4 million, although the Lord Treasurer managed to get that down to £300,000 by 1610.^[38] The project was one to which Salisbury attached great importance, but the House of Commons eventually lost interest in the plan;^[39] King James I also did not show much enthusiasm for it, and it lapsed when the King, against Salisbury's advice, dissolved Parliament in 1611. This was a double blow to Salisbury, who was sick and prematurely aged, and conscious that the King now increasingly preferred the company of his male favourites, like Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset. Although it failed to be implemented, the concept of paying an annual income to the monarch was revived some five decades later as a solution to the nation's financial problems and formed the basis for the financial settlement at the Restoration of Charles II.^[40] (Charles was to receive an income of approximately £1,200,000 per annum.)^[41] One historian describes this annual payment as the eventual "implementation of Cecil's Great Contract".^[42]