In Our Time - William Cecil

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact on the British Isles of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the most poweful man in the court of Elizabeth I. He was both praised and attacked for his flexibility, adapting to the reigns of Protestant and Catholic monarchs and, under Elizabeth, his goal was to make England strong, stable and secure from attack from its neighbours. He sought control over Ireland and persuaded Elizabeth that Mary Queen of Scots must die, yet often counselled peace rather than war in the interests of prosperity. With Diarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at the University of OxfordSusan Doran Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Oxfordand John Guy Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, William Cecil 1520 to 1598, was at the centre of power in the Tudor world for over 50 years, from the death of Henry VIII to the advent of James I. He advanced under the Boy King Edward VIII, survived under Mary,

and thrived under Elizabeth, and the Protestant cause flourished with him, whose Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, yet he went behind her back to have Mary Queen of Scots executed, and he both encouraged Elizabeth to marry and blocked her from marrying. We'd meet to discuss the life in times of William Cecil, Lord Burley, are Diamid McCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, John Guy, fellow of Clare College University of Cambridge, and Susan Doran, Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Oxford. John Guy, how close was William Cecil to the centre of power when he was born?

He's born on the periphery of power. His grandfather, David Cecil, was a sergeant-at-arms to Henry VIII. His father, Richard Cecil, is a page of the chamber. That's a relatively lowly official in that part of the king's household, where the king does appear from time to time, but he was promoted to be a yeoman of the wardrobe. And that was more than just looking after the king's clothes, many of which were in themselves hugely valuable.

It also included furniture and very valuable tapestries. I think, though, that the most important connection, because clearly this is part of a court network, was his grandfather. His grandfather was Sir David Philip, and he had been a leading household official for Henry VIII's grandmother. And it was because of David Philip

that the Cecil clan were, like settled in the area around Stamford, the Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, where they accumulated a reasonable amount of land. So if you like, he's in the food chain, but quite low down. What did it matter that he had a humanist education at Cambridge? Well, this is the most important thing because he wasn't sent to Eaton or Winchester, which were schools then for relatively poor, poor boys, you know, for whom they're, parents in village careers. He was educated, first of all, in simple church schools by a parish priest, but he went to St John's College, Cambridge, and that was a crucial connection because it was

also a college found by Lady Margaret Boker, Beaufort. And there he learnt classical... Who was? What significance about her? Well, because, of course, that's the connection with the Cecil clan. It was the obvious place for someone who had been connected to Sir David Philip to go. But there he learned, classical, mainly classical languages, Latin and Greek. He learnt rhetoric and he learnt moral philosophy. Well, of course, classical languages Latin and Greek were the languages in which you then studied rhetoric and moral philosophy. The point about rhetoric was that today you would probably call it the art of persuasion. It was how you learned to argue a case, how you learned

to put arguments for and against a topic, how you learn to learn to reach a reason conclusion. And of course, Cessal later in life became the arch persuader, silky smooth, devious, brutally, brutal, by all means at his disposal. Moral philosophy, the essence of that was really the Ciceroonian world of the high days of the Roman Republic. And so one of the main texts he learnt there was Cicero's Deficis on duties, and it was later said of Cecil that he never went anywhere without a copy of deophikis, either in his bosom or in his pocket. The point about this training was it prepared you either to be a secretary to a leading nobleman

or for counsel. It prepared you to actually enter the political world. And these subjects were at the heart of the Renaissance curriculum that courtiers were supposed to learn. He also made very good connections with two of the most brilliant men of his time. And he married, in each case, into that. that first wife, one of them who his wife died, and then the sister of another of them. Absolutely, because his main tutor, especially for Greek, was John Cheek.

And John Cheek later, of course, became the tutor to Edward the 6th, which gave Cecil quite an entree. But of course, I think Cecil, it was said of Mary Queen of Scots that she once said not to marry, you know, it cannot be for me. And in some ways Cecil was the marrying kind. He married Cheek's sister who had a real. relatively lowly status as effectively a sort of pub, you know, pub landlady. It couldn't last because she died, but they had one son.

But he then stepped up the ladder because he married Mildred Cook, the daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, who had a number of highly intelligent, well-educated daughters. And she was also educated in the humanist curriculum, and they were quite a power couple. So he learned from his own experience, what became one of his great powerful instruments, which was this modern word, networking. Absolutely. Networking, but also persuasion, rhetoric. I mean, he would have been, if the perfect, if you like, PR and publicity consultant, you know, for some great corporation if he lived today.

Dement. He came from a Protestant background. How secure was Protestantism when Edward was king, and Cecil was working for Edwards' protector Somerset? Well, desperately insecure, because Herri the Eighth's reign had been break with Rome, but the king had not committed himself really to either side Catholic or Protestant

in the Reformation turmoil. So when the boy king was there, his ministers thanks to a lot of politicking were basically Protestants and Protestants by conviction. But the country was not

there was an active minority, particularly around London in the places that mattered, lots of Protestants. But the extraordinary thing about Edward the Sixth reign is just what an experiment it is. This is the largest attempt at a Protestant Reformation in the whole of Europe up till then. And it's being led by this tight, small group of politicians, Cecil is on the edge of them. I mean, he was secretary to Edward Seymour, who became Duke of Somerset in this regime. So he's very committed already,

and the names that John Guy has fired at us, such as John Cheek, these are all early Protestants. And when you say the boy king, are you using boy king in sense? How surprising that a boy king did this? Well, the boy king at the heart of this, Henry's only son, Edward, was already a convinced Protestant. This is very mysterious. How did Henry VIII, the man who had not committed himself, allow his son to be educated

by undoubted Protestants? And that's a mystery. But he did. It's almost as if he was going to postpone the Reformation until he'd safely die. and this young man, or just a boy to start with, was a really hard-nosed Protestant, rather alarming his tutors and politicians by his eventually teenage enthusiasm for Protestant religion.

And for the necks of Catholics, executions of? Well, not as such. Not all that many Catholics died politically under Edward. So how did that have been? Well, I'm not hedging my bets because there were conservative Catholic rebellions against the government's policies, particularly in 1549, and a lot of people died. But really, they're dying for being rebels. They're not dying for being Catholic.

And there were rebellions which were not Catholic at the time, and an equal number of people died. So let's not see this regime as a murderous Protestant regime. It was not. Then he managed to continue to serve under marriage. after the death of Edward, who was very much a Catholic and others left the country or ran away, one thing another. He managed to serve under, how did he manage that? Well, I think by charm, John has talked about persuasion,

but actually there's no doubt that this man had charm, because under Edward, he transferred seamlessly from one politician Seymour to another politician Dudley. There were deadly enemies, and yet Cecil had served them both. Now under Mary, he had that charm still. He also had connections. He had a brother-in-law whose wife, this is Nicholas Bacon by name, his wife was a serving woman to the queen.

And she's clearly crucial, though she too was Protestant. You see, you did have Protestants who would quietly hang on. You've mentioned people who fled abroad, and other people were arrested and burnt at the stake. But some Protestants quietly just got on with being Protestant. until better times came. And the most important among them was not Cecil, but the Lady Elizabeth

heir to the throne. This is the half-sister. She'd be stripped of her title by Henry and so she couldn't be called Princess. She had been the Lady Mary as well. But now the Lady Mary is Queen Mary and the Lady Elizabeth was heir to the throne and you couldn't ignore that fact and she was undoubtedly a Protestant.

But like certain others, including Cecil, she quietly kept waiting for better times. Sue, Sue, Doran, when he first started to work for Elizabeth, he had been in touch with her for a while, I wonder, hadn't he? Could you tell us how we worked that relationship?

Yes, we've talked about networking and circles. They had overlapping circles. Both of them knew Catherine Parr, who was Henry the Eighth's last queen, pretty well. Elizabeth's tutor was Roger Ascombe, who had been at Cambridge, a tutor of William Cecil.

So one of the kinsmen of Cecil was Thomas Parry, who was in charge of Lady Elizabeth's household. So they knew each other, not necessarily face-to-face, but in terms of having connections in common. The first letters we have between the two of them date back to Edward the Sixth reign, whether they had met before then or not. We don't know, but I suspect they had.

The letters are pretty formal. They're Elizabeth usually asking for some favour from Cecil, who by that time was secretary. And they're also to do with Elizabeth's land because Elizabeth's father Henry had left Elizabeth's land in Lincolnshire. As we've already heard, Cecil's also had lands in Lincolnshire. And his family had been surveyors of the portions of land, the great estates that Elizabeth was to inherit.

And then Cecil came in to be the surveyor. of the land. So they had a pretty working relationship. Now it seems to... So in that sense you put her house and her finances in order, did he? Well, not her immediate household, but certainly her estates. So he showed himself to be an effective businessman and an honest one, which was to be very important to Elizabeth. It's one of the things she said about him when she made him her secretary that she could trust him and she meant in terms of his probity.

We also know that that almost certainly you mentioned the fact that she was called a lady Elizabeth she wrote a letter to Cecil suggesting that there might be another title she could have because it wasn't much of her status to be

just a lady. She couldn't be called a princess and it seems that he wrote to her and suggested that we don't know this for certain that she called herself the sister of the king which was a neat way of getting out of calling herself

the daughter of the king, because that would put Mary's nose out of joint. So they had these kinds of relationships before Mary's death. And in the last year of Mary's death, Cecil met Elizabeth. We know at least twice, and it's very likely they discussed at those meetings what the Privy Council of Elizabeth would look like, what his position would be, and also what kind of policy she would follow. When she became Queen 1558, she made him, Her secretary of state, what did she see in him and he and her?

But what basically did she see in him? It's an immediate appointment to a great state appointment. Well, they'd done it before. That helped. He was somebody who would be experienced. He was a Protestant. And as I said, they had a working relationship that demonstrated that she could trust him. I think, and I don't know when it developed,

but she also treated him as a kind of a good uncle. You know, she hadn't a father that she could have trusted. She had no male relationships that were really close and emotional. And I think that he filled that emotional gap for her. John Guy, what was Cecil's agenda when he and Elizabeth became this unit? Oh, he's absolutely got one. I mean, not just day one from Elizabeth's reign, but before that, because he arrived on day one with one memo in his pocket.

And there's another memo which he wrote. called the device for the alteration of religion. I mean, the, the, the, if you collate the two documents, the first ones in his handwriting, the second one, deals with almost exactly the same issues as are in the first one. So there's, I think it's fairly certain that he wrote, he wrote both of them. The essential elements are first of all, because England, of course, at the end of Mary Tudor's reign was at war with France.

There was, there were French forces actually in Calais, which had been retaken by the French from the English garrison. The first one is to make peace with France at almost any price, because of course there was a real threat that once Elizabeth had declared her hand in religion, then there could be some sort of Catholic invasion. The second one is to settle religion and as quickly as possible. And there Cecil has his plan, which is that this should be an unequivocally Protestant settlement. It is not a compromise between Catholics and Protestants.

However, it is a compromise within. the Protestants, the most radical Protestants, would be disappointed, and he knew that. But basically, it's an attempt to reach really on, if you like, Swiss Reformation lines, a coherent theological settlement, but one that must then be enforced. And then the third thing that concerns him greatly is Scotland, because, of course, there's a French army in Scotland, at least around Leith. And remember we're in 1558 and then early 1559, Henry the 2nd King of France, is still alive. And it was the policy of

Henry II, who was very much influenced then by the Gies faction in France, which is the family of the Mary Queen of Scots. She's still quite young. She's still a young teenager and she's in France, but she's not yet betrothed to the door found of France. But the fact of the matter is that Henry II had, if you like, a Franco-Imperial British policy which was to take Scotland first and then take out England. and somehow create some sort of Franco-British Empire.

So this is really, really threatening, and Cecil is determined to deal with those things. Had any financial ambitions? Because the finances were in a rocky state, weren't they? Well, this is another topic. Actually, on the first list, on the first list, he instructed Sir Thomas Gresham, who was the Crown agent for finance.

He was reappointed. He was told to effectively stop the export. of capital from England to Europe. The English government then was in Hoc to a fair degree to bankers in Antwerp, but Cessal didn't want money leaving the country, but he wanted Gresham on hand to deal with all financial matters. And the really, really, really interesting thing is that although Gresham has been based and was based in Antwerp, he knew to be present on the very afternoon of Elizabeth Thack Session

at Hatfield to kneel before her and to, you know, and receive his own commission as the Queen's banker. So there has to have been collusion before the event between Cecil and Gresham. Yes, he's always making these little connections, isn't it? And they turn up like that. Dammit, can you tell us how the views of Cecil and Queen Elizabeth I first coincided on Protestantism and how they decided to pursue it? Well, they're both Protestants.

Let's not escape that fact there. That's the bottom line. They're not identical, though, because Cecil had been associated with a really forward-driving revolution under Edward the Sixth. And Elizabeth had been slightly distanced from that. She was a rather conservative Protestant. She liked ceremonial, and she did not like rapid religious change. So there's a bit of attention there, and Cecil's job was to keep her on line with this very, thoroughgoing reformation. It's going to be a complete turnaround from Mary's Catholic Church.

So there's a bit of a job there. He was still identified with this forward dynamic sort of policy and religion, and everyone assumed that that meant change and change and change. What happened in 1558 to 9 was meant to be a sort of springboard for lots more change, and it never happened. So in that sense, the Queen's policy of keeping things, quite controlled was the one which won. And you can see Cecil gradually falling behind that line, gradually falling in line with it over the next, well, 40 years really. So she won? She did. But on the other hand, she was committed to a reformation which, as John says, looked to Switzerland, not the rather more conservative reformation of Martin Luther in North Germany. That's a victory for Cecil

and the Protestants who felt like him, but frankly, by that stage, most Protestants felt like that. Lutheranism had sort of withered away in England. It's a rather mysterious thing. The future of the Church of England would be much more like that of Central Europe. People we might think of as Calvinists,

that's an inaccurate word. People from Zurich, people from Geneva. So, so, Dorn, what Cecil seems to have specialised in was getting a lot of knowledge and being able to retain it and table it and work on it and very efficient, extraordinarily hard working

and so on. How did he find out all he wanted to know about what was going on in Europe and Britain? Well, first of all, he commissioned maps and he would write on the maps. He commissioned a huge amount of documentation and we can see a lot of it in the archive, in the British Library,

the lands down the archive, and also in Hatfield House, where there's a big Cecil Archive, huge amount of material that he reads, obviously, because he writes on a lot of it. So partly through reading, partly through talking to people, and partly through a network of informers that he uses.

Some of them we would call spies, some of them are ambassadors, but they all come to him. The other thing that's really... And he's working with Walsingham as well, isn't he? Later on, he works with Worsingham. He ceases to be the secretary, and Walsing, in 15,7.

and Worsingham takes over from him after a short gap where there's someone who's not terribly good at it. So, yes, he works with Worsingham. And again, they have their own, as it was, separate coterie of informers, sometimes working together, sometimes working independently. And then later in the rain, that happens with the Earl of Essex. Earl of Essex has his informers. But the great thing about Burley, as he then becomes, is that he is remarkable. in mastering detail.

I mean, he had an extraordinary memory, and he used it in order to put forward the kinds of arguments John talked about for and against. He didn't just put his own opinions. He gave information to back up those opinions. Is there any way we could shortly describe what he was going for in collecting this intelligence?

He had these maps, and he put on the map everybody of any consequence that meant title and money all over, so he knew who to go for when he had to go for them. What about Europe? What's he going for there? Security. I think what he's looking for more than anything else is to protect England from the Catholics. Well, he works out in terms of, say, Ireland, which are the vulnerable points to invasion, which of the lords there might support England, which might go over to the Spaniards.

The same is in Scotland. He builds up relationships with the Scottish earls who are Protestant, seeks to know exactly what's happening with those earls like the Earl of Huntley and others who are Catholic, whether they have relationships with Spain or with France. So he's developing an understanding of what the dangerous people are doing and who they might be conspiring with that will save England. I think in the background of all this is that what he would know and what every Tudor-Statesman would know was that England, was a second-rate power.

It was not one of the big boys. It was not the equivalent of the King of France or the Holy Roman Emperor or the King of Poland. Those are the three big boys. And so any Tudor monarch has to face the problem of that. And you're not the main focus of Europe. But the real danger now is that the government had committed itself to a policy which was desperately unpopular with those three big boys. In other words, Protestantism. and so all the time there is this desire for security against the grain

you've got somehow to keep in control these other powers. And that's linked, of course, with the problem of Mary Queen of Scots because it's not just that Elizabeth is insecure because she's a Catholic, because she's a Protestant and there's these big boys. These big boys are looking to Mary Queen of Scots who could be either the heir or could seek to displace her. So we have Mary's Queen of Scots, John, on the other side of the border. She's gone there now.

She's the natural, a nutshell. She's the heir to the throne. She's also, she herself has a son who will be an heir. So he sees it as a great threat, a great nuisance he calls her, but he means a great threat. Mary is Cecil's obsession. He can't even, in no state paper that I've ever found has he mentioned her name as such as Mary. She's SQ, the Scottish Queen. She's so dangerous in his opinion she can only be named by,

acronym because what we've just been talking about morphs in Cecil's mind into the thesis of some grand Catholic conspiracy involving the Pope, Philip II of Spain, France, the Gies faction, all of those things in which there's going to be some great sort of crusade against England invasion in order to put Mary on the throne. And Mary is all the more dangerous. because when she gets back to Scotland, she, in fact, even before she's got back to Scotland, she makes Elizabeth an offer. And that offer is that she will resign her immediate claim to the English throne

and recognise Elizabeth as the absolute rightful Queen of England, if in return Elizabeth will name Mary as her heir, provided she herself does not marry and have children. And of course that offer was so reasonable several times Elizabeth took it quite seriously. Mary also proposed that if the two queens could meet woman to woman, they could settle their differences away from all these scheming men. And Elizabeth was, there were a number of occasions when Elizabeth was very taken with that idea,

and the two queens very nearly met in 1562. It was stopped by the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion. But I have to tell you that Cecil had already written the equivalent of the press release canceling the meeting two weeks before the actual event. occurred that triggered the French wars of religion. So Cecil is not just he's not just sitting there in London you know, I mean making his plans

he's actually actively funding the Protestant Lords in Scotland he's sending them gold coins illicitly untraceable gold coins across the border later on against Mary. Against Mary Queen of Scotland Later on he sends the Earl of Murray

who's the sort of the chief Protestant lord he even sends him armaments which I only found out about six months ago in the British in the British Library. What's all of armaments? Basically bows, bows and arrows. It would have been too risky to send them guns, I think, but he sends bows and arrows. And those he used at later on again, they're in the, at least the army of, they're used in the, the armament store of the Protestant lords just before Carberry Hill.

So, look, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is absolutely real. and Cecil sits up at night, you know, to the equivalent of two o'clock in the morning, writing memos, you know, what to do about Mary because he knows that Elizabeth, in her heart, regards Mary as the rightful heir. And in fact, she said so. She said so quite early on in the 1560s. She actually says so to Maitland of Leffington, who comes south in the summer of 1561, the Scottish Secretary of State, the Scottish Cecil. And she says that privately she knows that Mary is the true heir by Blard and Dynastic Right. just isn't going to name her for fear of conspiracy.

So there's just one thing that we need to learn that, if you like, the strap line for all of this is that Cecil becomes committed by all means at his disposal, fair or foul, to the preservation of the Protestant state. And being committed by foul means to the execution of Mary, Dammit. In the end, we'd be jumping forward into the 1580s. But Mary, by that time, had associated herself with conspiracy. there is no doubt. And not only that, but the Scots had, to cut a very long story short, got extremely fed up with her as Queen and jucked her out, considering that she had been implicated in the murder of one husband, implicated at least. And then she turned up in England in 1568. And not only is she a Catholic heir to the throne, but with a very dubious status. What do you do with her? She is the focus for conspiracy, whether she likes it or not.

And that worried Cecil deeply and continued to worry him until she eventually died. Now, what were the stages? There were plots. There was the famous Babbington plot. Somehow, rather, Queen Elizabeth signed a warrant for her death, which she had signed, but she didn't mean it to be implemented. One of you take this up, because I think I'm on the right lines, but you can tell it better than I can. John? Well, Elizabeth just didn't want to sign the death warrant because although by, by, 1586. I mean the thing about that is that the dynamics completely changed because Elizabeth and Cecil signed a treaty, an

Anglo-Scott's treaty with James. And after that, Mary had no hope of ever returning to Scotland, so she was willing to listen to conspirators. So she listens to the Babington plot. Evidence is found, and she did undoubtedly conspire, and she did undoubtedly conspire, and she did undoubtedly condone the plot. The plot was to assassinate the Queen.

To assassinate the Queen. Walsingham tripped up and actually lost the crucial piece of evidence, so they had to re-forge it, but leaving that aside. Even then, Elizabeth won't sign the warrant, and Cecil gets her to sign the warrant. He's got it, has it in his pockets for several weeks, by telling her that the Spanish Armada has landed a year early in Wales, a Spanish force has landed a year early,

and they also... Which it hadn't. And they also conjure up a plot. They were all, at least resurrect an old plot and pretend it's a new one. But the thing is that Elizabeth signs the warrant, and then she has second thought. she steps back from it she tells her secretary to keep it to himself

and not to basically pass it on she was surprised that he's even got it sealed as quickly as he did Cecil meets him outside he says give it to me he then summons a quiet if you like a secret cabal of privy councillors selected privy councillors in his own chamber

and they decide to send the warrant regardless of the queen and not to tell the queen until the deed is done and as a result of that She Elizabeth now is having it both ways. She may have perhaps suspected that this would happen, but the point is that now she can give Cecil the, if you like, the dressing down of a lifetime.

And after that, he's much more cautious. She doesn't speak to him for six months. He only gets off the charges are brought. He only gets off by filing an affidavit in the Court of Star Chamber in which he commits perjury by saying that Davidson had actually given him permission from the Queen to send the warrant and so on. So he tells a lie to get out of it. So that is the end of Mary Queen of Scots

and we'll move on to Cecil's attitude to making war. The Spanish Amida's on the way now. He's got Sir Francis Drake who stops playing bowls, gets in his ships and there's a big wind which helps. Should we start before then? Because I think it's important to note that Cecil considers France to be the greater enemy

for a long time in Elizabeth's reign. And this is again due to Mary Queen of Scots. She spent a lot of time in France and her uncles are members of the Guise family who are French Catholics, important French Catholics. So the danger, as far as Sassad is concerned,

comes from France. Furthermore, England has very good trade relations with Spain. It's not just that Antwerp is the centre for English cloth, but there's a lot of merchants who trade directly with the Iberian Peninsula. and they often lobby William Sessor to tell him that, you know, there must be nothing done to endanger their pockets and that trade. So he's very supportive of keeping a relationship, if at all possible,

on good terms with Spain. Okay, he will try to make things difficult for Spain, especially after a revolt breaks out in the Netherlands when Protestants, co-religionists of Elizabeth, are fighting for their lives as well as, later on from independence from Spain. But he wants to keep it low-key, underground help for those Protestants.

He doesn't support, for example, Francis Drake going around the world. And when Francis Drake brings the bullion back, he basically wants to hand it back to Spain, whereas others want to keep it in the Tower of London, which is what happens. So it's only really, in the mid-1580s that Cecil realises there's no other option

but to directly engage with Spain. John? But his policy is always to fight a defensive war. He resists Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in sending an expeditionary force to the Netherlands for a while and then it becomes inevitable. Once the war has started, he agrees totally with Elizabeth. On this, they are always shoulder to shoulder,

that it should be a defensive war and not the sort of aggressive war, either on the sea that Walter Raleigh wants to fight or on land that the Earl of Essex wants. wants to fight. And even before the Spanish Armada, both of them together, have openings to Spain,

the Duke of Palmer, trying to get peace negotiations. And it's only when the Spanish Armada takes place that the two of them have to recognise. This is all out war. Ahmed, you've written the massive book on Thomas Cromwell.

Is there any sense in which Cessler's learning from Cromwell? Oh, completely. Yeah, I mean Cromwell shaped an England which William Cecil did not change. The great patterns were set in the

1530s. The pattern of government with a privy council with Parliament playing increasing roles in agreeing to decisions and occasionally actually initiating decisions. A system of a civil service of information.

We've talked about Cecil pouring over documents. Well, Cromwell set that precedent. You just have to know things. And Cecil really, for all the things that we've talked about, the intense firefighting for 40 years in political

crises again and again and again, there is very little political or structural change under Cecil. Once they sort of the coinage out, we talked about that at the very beginning of the rain, huge achievement. There really isn't much innovation at all. Taxation sort of

gets fossilized. And in that sense, he's a rather conservative politician. But Cromwell lurking behind him as the Protestant statesman who showed him what to do. Then there's the problem of Elizabeth's marriage, which she broke down in tears in front of the Privy Council. One of you says when she was told she couldn't marry the Duke of enjou. I think that was quite theatrical, though. I think this was designed to impress the French ambassador. The thing is, I mean, the obvious question is, if Cecil was so capable, why couldn't he produce the Irish?

ideal candidate for Elizabeth to marry, because after all, I mean, Cecil's almost like motif was God sends our mistress a husband and by him a son that our posterity may be ruled by a masculine succession. And I think he really did think he had found the ideal candidate in the 1560s just after Elizabeth had the smallpox epidemic and, you know, might well have died because he is at the front of a campaign to persuade Elizabeth to marry the Archduke Charles of Austria, the third son of the Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I first, and that runs until 1567.

The miscalculation was that they all thought that Charles was more flexible in religion than he actually was. And Elizabeth, and I think Cecil II, would not allow him private masses in his own chapel should he come to England. Should he come to England? But I think actually,

it's often said in the consensus for a long time has been that Elizabeth didn't marry in great part because her counsellors could never agree on a candidate. But I do think that Elizabeth herself was actually extremely reluctant when it came to the push to marry. And there are conditions that are put, that she puts on Charles, which are not just can he not have private masses, that basically there's to be a reverse diary.

He has to pay a diary. You know, usually the woman gives a diary. Also, he's not to have any rights or title to the crown. He's got no rights of succession, all of those things. So, sorry, did you know, Sue, how much power did Cecil have at the height of his power? Huge amount. Not enough to persuade Elizabeth to do what she didn't want to do. That's certain.

Well, for example, he couldn't persuade her to exclude Mary Queen of Scots from the succession. He couldn't persuade her to name a successor. He couldn't persuade her to allow non-conformists in religion to go their own way and not to be deprived of their livings. There were many ways in which Elizabeth made the final decision, but nevertheless, within the Elizabethan regime, he has to be considered the most powerful man. He was the one everybody wrote to in order to try and get his suit settled. he controlled Elizabeth's correspondence for most of the reigns, certainly when he was the secretary. He could massage information to put it in a way that might influence Elizabeth. Is it true that when letters sent her he read them first and read them aloud to her and then allowed her to temper with them?

Well, I think it wasn't he allowed her to. I think she preferred him to read it. Sometimes she would read the letters herself, but very very much. often we know that he read them to her or parts of the letter or he summarized the letters. That's a very powerful position. And as he said himself, I am no clerk as secretary. He saw himself as Elizabeth's leading counsellor, and indeed he was. Did he also see himself as her leading courtier?

And how did these two things play? He wasn't a natural extrovert and he rather played on that. He had a favourite mule he liked to. to ride on and it's a very sort of humble animal it's a bit of a pose because of course he made huge sums of money and built magnificent houses

but the courtier image was not him there were people around who could do that Robert Dudley Earl of Lester for instance and later on the Earl of Essex he's not that sort of guy he's much more the sort of statesman like Thomas Cromwell

it's been a bit holier than that It is affection for Spain had anything to do with the fact that he had shares in... He and his son had shares in trade with Spain. Well, no doubt it helped. But there is a rationale here. We've already mentioned Antwerp. That's the natural trading nexus for England.

I mean, the cloth trade is just utterly dependent on that. So whoever ruled Antwerp was going to be the obvious partner for England, and that was the Habsburg monarch, King of Spain at that stage. But just to want to persist one second about the taxation system, which was ridiculously corrupt, and the tax he paid on the immense sums he earned was, I think it was your phrase, ridiculously low or yours, John. Absolutely.

I mean, he was constantly worrying about money, finance of government, and yet he himself was not paying a good whack. And the nobility and gentry generally were not. The tax system was a problem postponed during Elizabeth Rain. It's self-assessment. That's the big change, of course, from Woolsey and Thomas Cromwell. It's self-assessment from the 1560s onwards. And Cessal declares his income to be exactly the same as it was in the reign of Edward the 6th. It's simply stereotyped.

So that's that. Let's talk about how he arranges smooth successions. He dies before. Elizabeth died, but nevertheless his succession is very smooth. It's bloodless and so on. What part did he play in that? How did he prepare for that, sir? Well, he didn't play any part in it when it really happened. No, not actively, because he was dead, but I mean he prepared for it.

He prepared for it in the sense that his son, Robert Cecil, I would say, picked up on his idea, which was that if Elizabeth died without his successor, there should be a grand council, where the nobility and the council, privy council, that really shouldn't exist anymore because the queen is dead. All her councillors have no more positions. but he allowed there to be this great council and he planned for it, Cecil, which Robert took her up, which decided that James the 6th should be King of England.

Now what Cecil, William Cecil, had expected would be that this grand council would actually choose the next successor. But by the time that Robert was making the decisions and of making the arrangements, there really was nobody else that was going to be, in line for the throne. What can we say, coming towards the end here now, dearman, what can we say changed under the Tudors because of Cecil?

The realm survived as an increasingly important Protestant power. That's the change, because we started with a really fragile regime, and with two brief reigns, Edward and Mary, England being a marginal power, and then Elizabeth came along to turn it into something which was really quite dangerous to do to create a Protestant power. And Cecil's achievement was to make that solid, make it safe. I don't think he ever ceased to worry. But between 1558 and his death in 1598, England had settled down in a Protestant Reformation

and it would be extremely difficult to reverse it, whereas in 1558 it would be quite easy. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much John Gaij, Sue Dorn and Damon McCulloch. week, what does it mean to be oneself? We'll discuss the idea of authenticity from Aristotle to Sartre and Sins. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, thank you for that. Gosh, if there's more to say, please say it now. Well, there is, isn't there? And we were just overwhelmed by information just as he was. I think the one thing, the charming thing,

but the important thing we ought to have talked about is gardens. Well, I was going to say Tibauds. I mean, it's a magnificent house. It's a house for a king. And indeed, James took it over. Well, he created the great houses. Yes. But around them was the garden.

And that's a mark of his being a humanist train statesman, isn't it? Because this idea of order and harmony that gardens teach you lessons, but they are also a place that you are at your most human. they are around you to express civilisation and so on. That's very much his idea. And of course his brother-in-law did the same thing. The great Sir Nicholas Bacon, they were both huge garden enthusiasts.

But I think it also shows the influence of Italy. You know, we're saying that he's not a courtier, but actually he read a lot of the works about how courtiers should live. And he also was influenced by Italian architecture and Italian garden design. He was the patron. of John Gerard who wrote the great herbal and Gerard's great coup

working for Cecil was to discover the hot house and so Cecil actually had plants from Chile, Peru, Japan he had exotic plants and of course he would show them off and in these wonderful Italian gardens with fountains and when Elizabeth came to stay

she walked through the alleys and they would have banquets which is basically in a sweet wine and sort of comfits, mostly sugar confets. Elizabeth had a very sweet tooth, somewhere in the garden on the late summer evenings. I think also actually, although these are part of a sort of tremendous Renaissance-type display,

they're also actually gardening wars at the Court of Elizabeth I first, because courtiers were actually competing to have the... There was much less factionalism at the Elizabethan court than used to be thought, but they would compete and show off, you know, I've got the best garden, and certainly Robert Dudley and... and Cecil were competing in that way. The buildings, too.

I mean, he built Burley House. He had stuff sent over from Antwerp. He had marble. He had alabaster. He had a whole gallery sent over from Antwerp, which Thomas Gresham arranged for him. And then he was building, as Sue has said, on a huge grand scale at Tibbles,

which is near, which is just by junction 25 of the M25. It doesn't exist now. used to be the Tesco Management Centre, but you can't see anything very much there now. But, of course, it had three huge courts and was as grand as most royal palaces. And we kept talking about Italy,

and I think the one thing which people don't appreciate is that you think Italy is Catholic. Well, of course, the Pope lives there. But in fact, in the 1520s, 30s, 40s, that was not the main identity of Italy. It was likely to have a Protestant Reformation like everywhere else. So Italian interest,

Italian architecture, is not Catholic. It is Protestant. Oh, it is just courtly. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily have a confessional tone to it. Right. So all the great statesmen of Mid Tudor, England,

would build magnificent Renaissance houses as they understood the Renaissance style. It's not associated with Catholicism. Another point I think that's important. is that he sought to the future because in his household he brought in wards, important nobleman, who, that he, you know, he was their guardian as the master of the court of wards, and they would be educated or were educated in his household. He arranged marriages for them, the Earl of Oxford, married, unfortunately, very sadly, his daughter Anne.

But these were the men he thought were going to take over in the next generation, so that he would influence them in the ways of being good counsellors and good Protestants. Actually, that leads us on to the one thing we've not said and we should, that his great interest, as with all Tudor statesmen, was to create a dynasty. And his eldest son was a bit of a waste of space, who became Lord Burley and by hereditary right. But then the second son, we've talked about Robert Cecil. Now, he is as great a statesman and went on to be the chief leading politician in the early part of James, first's reign. But beyond that, the Sissals, they're one of the great names in English history,

thanks to William Sissle. You think of Victorian Prime Ministers when you think of the Sissals, as well as Elizabethan statesman. Now there is a triumphant achievement, and that's probably the one he'd have relished most of all his achievements. He was terribly interested in genealogy and traced his family back to William, you know, the Conqueror with sort of quite misleading results, had coats of arms, I mean, he was very chummy with the heralds who would, you know, supply him with all of this information. I mean, that sort of passion. Fake news, John.

Yes, that passion, though, is on a sort of passion with his interesting maps and cosmography and which had a political purpose. But he was also interested in maps actually simply from a, if you like, a renaissance and humanist perspective, too, that this was how you understood the world better. Well, did he have any friends? Lots, I think. Yes. Real French friends. Oh, yes. And that's part of the clubability of the man. Yes, he had dinners where people would enjoy merry conversation, as one of his biographers said, contemporary biographers. Yes, he had people who wrote two people who wrote lives of the life of Cecil immediately afterwards, people he was close to.

Yeah. I'd say the Queen was a friend. Oh, definitely. This is not just a professional relationship. It's friendship there. And that's why she could get in such a rage with him. An odd relationship though, isn't it? I mean, the more we find out, especially the recent stuff, where she turns out to be rather more indecisive than we thought. Well, I think so.

I don't think every historian, Judea historian, would have necessarily agree with that, but I think that certainly the beginning of the reign, she was much more vulnerable, and, I mean, she was relatively young, just 25 when she took the throne. I mean, there's no doubt that she was having to learn how to cope with Cecil.

I mean, there are quotations that we can that we can say that, you know, speak directly to us. One is when Robert Jones, the English ambassador to Francis' secretary, came to London in 1560, he came over with news from Throck Morton, who was the ambassador. But he saw Elizabeth, and we don't know exactly what he told Elizabeth, but the next day he was sent for, he complains about this, he was sent for the next day and given a real telling off by Cecil, who said, you should not have told the Queen a matter of such weight being too much for a woman's nod.

college and over Scotland in the winter of 1559 to 60, Elizabeth didn't want to deal with Scotland. In fact, Cecil talked her into and against much advice from the Privy Council to at that time into sending a force up to Scotland to hell the Protestant Lords. But when Elizabeth wouldn't do this certainly for quite a long time at first, he wrote her, or at least he wrote a letter which he may or may not have sent. If he didn't send it, it was left in a drawer. can read it. And it says, to serve your majesty in anything that I

cannot allow must be an unprofitable service. He also wrote to Matthew Parker, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and he said, because he wrote many of Elizabeth's letters in draft, and I mean, she did read them through, but I mean, he was, there was a,

the politics between Elizabeth and Cecil are the politics of the letter writing, which he controls to a very considerable degree, and she is keeping him at bay on, contrary. virtual subjects, but he says to Matthew Parker, you're going to get a letter from the Queen next week. I've just written it. It might be a little bit too long. Have a look and see what you think. If there's anything that you want taken out, I'll take it out. If there's anything

you want to put it in, the one thing that worries me is that the Queen might, because some of it concerns the Reformation, the Queen may try to alter it more than I shall allow. Now, that's interesting language. That speaks for itself. And you've all spoken very well for yourselves. Thank you very much. producer. Does anyone want it? To your coffee? To your coffee? Yeah, I wouldn't mind a tea. Tea would be great. Tea would be all right. I think we have got it all great.

Tea would be lovely, thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Hello, I'm Greg Foote and I'm hosting a new Radio 4 podcast called The Best Things Since Sliced Bread. Have you ever wondered what's fact and what's fad when it comes to wonder products? Face creams, activated charcoal, kombucha,

tumouric shots. That's what I'm trying to find out with the help of leading scientists and special guests. If you want to separate benefits from Buncom, subscribe to the best thing since sliced bread on BBC Sounds.