Elizabeth and her [Northamptonshire] Ministers
By Julia Moss
Queen Elizabeth is one of the best-known figures in English history and so much has been written about her that all of us have formed our own picture of this outstanding and successful monarch.
For over 40 years, from her accession in 1558 to her death in 1603 Elizabeth remained the dominant figure on the English political scene - she has given her name to an age, a fact which may make us forget that she never acted, never could act, in isolation. She chose her ministers and they gave her devoted service and in return she had to consider their advice. There were outside courtiers also. As she herself said in one of her last speeches to Parliament “and though God has raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your loves”. It was the duty of these influential men who surrounded her, members of her Privy Council for the most part, to give her all possible help and, as you can see from the speech I have just quoted, by and large they succeeded magnificently. Most of these men including the three I want to discuss now, Sir William Cecil of Burghley, Sir Walter Mildmay and Sir Christopher Hatton, were members of the Queen's Privy Council. At that time, the Privy Council played a vital part in the government of the country. The Tudor historian Elton goes so far as to write that the Queen reigned, and though the Queen may even have ruled, it was the Privy Council that governed. In Elizabethan times the council was a small group of men, normally 18 in number, sometimes as few as 12, but their importance was enormous. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was a Privy Councillor, so for a short period was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and more important if less aristocratic men like Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Nicholas Bacon. Why then did I choose Cecil, Mildmay and Hatton? Well, William Cecil, Lord Burghley was an obvious choice. From the day of Elizabeth accession in November 1558, when she appointed him her principal secretary, until his death 40 years later Queen and Cecil worked together as a team and to quote Elton again “As a team they were superb”. Apart from his distinction as a statesman, I had a more personal reason for my interest in Burghley. He was a man with shining local connection; it was this factor too, which made me decide to focus my attention on Sir Walter Mildmay of Apethorpe and Oundle (he owned a house in West Street) and on Christopher Hatton of Holdenby and Kirby Hall, rather than on Walsingham and Nicholas Bacon, or any of the other prominent Privy Councillors of the reign.
Before going on to discuss Burghley and his two fellow counsellors, I want to say a little about the country they governed and the Queen they served. To start with, what was the size of the population? Without census figures, we can only make a very vague guess. To quote Hurstfield, who spent a life studying Tudor England, we should probably not be far wrong if we said that at the beginning of the reign it was far less than a tenth of what it is today at the end of the reign somewhat more than on a tenth. A broad guess would take up somewhere between three and five million. Small though this population seems to us the farming methods were primitive and in years of bad harvest the country couldn't feed itself. In the late 1590s after three successive years of bad harvests, there was widespread famine on the scale we now associate with developing countries. England was still largely an agrarian society. There were some important towns, ports such as Bristol and Hull, cloth towns like Beverley and Norwich, cathedral cities like York and Winchester, but, with the exception of London, they were not much bigger than medium sized market towns of today. For much of the population much of the time it was a period of growth and prosperity and increasing natural self-confidence. This self-confidence is reflected in popular ballads, one of which I found under the modern heading “Pop poetry: late Elizabethan” which I thought a delightful description.
The growing prosperity and self-confidence led to an increase in the amount of building. One contemporary, a Bishop, wrote “Englishmen indulge in the pleasures as if they were to die tomorrow and build as if they were to live forever” and Northamptonshire, the fashionable County in those days, illustrates the truth of this statement. Cecil's house at Burghley and Kirby Hall, one of Hatton's two grand houses, are good examples of this Tudor passion for building on a grand scale.
Local differences between north and south, the centre and the periphery, are highlighted by poor communications. It was certainly a north south divide in the 16th century and Elizabeth never ventured far north on her summer progresses. Use of the word “country” where we would say “county” seems to me to typify this intense local feeling. People below the rank of the gentry and merchants generally had little occasion or opportunity to move more than a few miles from their own village. As you can see from the careers of Burghley, Mildmay and Hatton the upper classes were more mobile. They often spent some time studying at Oxford or Cambridge and might go onto one of the Inns of Court to gain some knowledge of the law. Some of them went abroad on missions of war or diplomacy and many of them spent considerable periods of time in London at the Queen’s Court or as members of Parliament. It was a time when patronage was of enormous importance in all aspects of society. Although the monarch was the principal dispenser of patronage; leading nobleman and royal servants such as Leicester and Burghley also controlled a vast amount of patronage. As Sir John Neale wrote “If it is possible -and I imagine that the biographical approach would alone make it possible - I should like to discover through whose influence every Elizabethan official got his job; to find out in which great courtier’s orbit he moved”. It was not just officials and parliamentarians who needed a patron. Artists, dramatists and even Puritan preachers required patrons and I was interested and a little surprised to discover that the Earl of Leicester was a great patron of Puritan divines. In reply to a Puritan who had rebuked him -as Puritans often did (they even rebuked the Queen) – he wrote “Besides, who in England both had or half more learned chaplains belonging to him then I, or have preferred more to the furtherance of the church of learned preachers”.
Patronage also played an important part in the composition of parliament [In the parliaments of the mid 80s, Lord Burghley’s nominees totalled twenty six, including his younger son Robert who had a distinguished career ahead of him]. Only rarely, were members of parliament chosen by elections. In the borough seats, the patron often nominated the member, or the local oligarchy made the choice.
In the counties, agreement had to be arrived at between different groups or factions of the nobility and gentry as to who should represent the area. In the course of the reign, Cecil, Mildmay and Hatton all held one of the two Northamptonshire County seats. Mildmay began as a borough remember in 1545, way back in Henry the eighth reign and sat in 12 parliaments altogether, so by the time he died in 1589 he had a vast amount of parliamentary experience. In the 16th century parliament was in a state of transition. As Sir John Neale writes in his great work Elizabeth and her Parliament. “At the opening of the 16th century, Parliament was essentially a legislative and taxing body, its meetings intermittent. Even at the end of the century the same description might be formally applied to it; but in the meanwhile, it had become a practical force with which the Crown and government had to reckon”.
Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, many activities were supposedly outside its jurisdiction, including the succession, a very sensitive area, foreign policy, the declaration of war and peace - and the Queen’s opinion - ecclesiastical doctrine and practice; these were views to which some of the more militant Puritans such as Peter Wentworth could never subscribe. [This champion of Parliamentary free speech – the Dennis Skinner of his age - claimed “all matters that concern God’s honour through free speech shall be propagated here and set forward and all things that do hinder it removed, repulsed and taken away”.] Yet so great was his devotion to the Queen that on one occasion when a clerk, for the sake of brevity, wanted to write simply “Queen Elizabeth”, Wentworth was extremely angry. “What!” he exclaimed, “Shall we not acknowledge her to be our Sovereign Lady? This is well indeed! I think some of us are wary of her. I am not wary of her for my part, and therefore I will have it set down “Our Sovereign Lady”.
Throughout her reign, however much she might differ from them, Elizabeth kept the loyalty of the bulk of her subjects. After the dynastic upheavals of the 15th century, the so-called Wars of the Roses, and the religious turmoil of the reign of Edward VI and Mary, Elizabeth gave the country stability. At a time when successful women rulers were almost unknown. She gave the country what it needed - a sovereign who could act as a unifying force. She must have been a remarkable woman. Some valuable accounts of English affairs in the 16th century have been left to us by Venetian ambassadors, one of whom wrote that whenever the English see a handsome foreigner, that they say he looks like an Englishman. I couldn't resist this delightful observation but more relevant is the portraits of Elizabeth as a young girl, drawn by the Venetian ambassador in 1557.
Another shrewd foreign observer, the Spanish Count of Feria wrote to his master King Philip “She is a very vain woman but a very acute one”.
The Venetian ambassador in his account of the Princess Elizabeth and her sister Queen Mary (Tudor), emphasised their knowledge of foreign language, ancient and modern. Of Mary he writes “She understands five languages, English, Latin, French, Spanish and Italian” and of Elizabeth “In her knowledge of the Greek and Italian languages she surpasses the Queen”. Here they benefited from the Renaissance attitude to the education of women. Men are different, as the Catholic martyr Sir Thomas Moore, and Burghley 's father-in-law the staunch puritan Sir Anthony Cooke, had daughters who were famed for their learning. Cooke believed that “sexes is as well as souls are equal in capacity”. Elizabeth’s early studies meant that later when she became Queen, she was able to bring to the business of Government a trained mind. Her knowledge of Latin, French and Italian and her understanding of Spanish help to explain her control of foreign policy. As Sir John Neale writes “As a woman in the age of John Knox she would have been hard put too it to direct policy, had she not been as able as the best of her counsellors, and more able than most of them, to conduct the interviews with foreign ambassadors”. In 1597, in the Queen’s old age, her knowledge of Latin stood her in good stead. Hurstfield describes the way in which she dealt with an important impertinent foreign ambassador who dared to attack her in public.
Clearly Elizabeth was a woman of formidable intellect, but who were her tutors? Here she was very fortunate. The tutors of both Elizabeth and her brother, the young Edward VI, we're both members of that group of Cambridge humanists who were to play such an important part in her reign. Edward’s tutor was John Cheke, a brilliant young Greek scholar from St. John’s College Cambridge. While he was not at St. John’s, John Cheke had been the tutor and close friend of young William Cecil - who had fallen in love with and married Cheke’s sister Mary. Elizabeth’s tutor was Roger Aschlaw, another pupil of Cheke’s and it was Aschlaw who wrote “Her mind have no womanly weakness, perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up”. Her encounter with the Polish ambassador certainly demonstrated the truth of the last point of this statement. These Cambridge contacts provided an early link between Elizabeth and a number of the men who later became her trusted advisors, including William Cecil, whose career I now want to discuss.
William Cecil was born in September 1520 at Bourne in Lincolnshire at the home of his maternal grandfather. He was born into a family which had risen in the service of the Tudors. Despite considerable effort on William’s part, it proved impossible to trace his father’s family back any further than his grandfather, David Cecil, a Yeoman from the Welsh borders who served Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field and later settled at Stamford. He continued in the service of Henry VII and Henry VIII, married well and became an MP and Sheriff of Northamptonshire. His son Richard, Williams father, seems to have carried on where his father David left off. He too was around the court, first as a royal page, then present in some capacity at the Field of the Cloth of Gold where Henry VIII met Francis I in surroundings of great splendour. Richard married Jane Heckington, a Lincolnshire heiress, a prudent match no doubt. He became groom of the robes and constable of Warwick Castle. He acquired property in Rutland and Northamptonshire, including the little Burghley estate, where the family lived, and William was later to build the magnificent Burghley House.
It was the efforts of his father and grandfathers which provided the springboard for William Cecil's career. He was educated at the grammar schools of Grantham and Stamford and in 1535 he entered St. John’s College Cambridge at the age of 15. Among his contemporaries at Cambridge were such men as Nicholas Bacon, who became Elizabeth’s first Lord Keeper. Bacon’s wife, Anne Cooke, was a sister of Cecil's second wife Mildred. The contacts and relationships which Cecil made at Cambridge were to be vitally important to him in later life. When you look at Elizabeth’s councilors, you are struck by the close ties between them, ties in which marriage played an important part. Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, father of the more famous Francis Bacon, were brothers-in-law. Mildmay was married to Mary one of the sisters of Sir Francis Walsingham. Another Walsingham sister was married to the outspoken puritan parliamentarian Peter Wentworth. The Elizabethan ruling class was small and close knit, often bound even closer by family ties, which were enormously important in the period when patronage was so central to public life.
All this however was in the future. While William was at Cambridge he fell in love with Mary Cheke, the sister of his friend and Greek tutor John Cheke, and shortly after leaving Cambridge in 1541, he married her. This first marriage must have been a love match as Mary’s only fortune was £40, and her widowed mother kept a wine shop, none of which pleased William’s father. He may even have hoped to prevent the marriage by removing William from Cambridge and entering him at Greys Inn, where Mildmay was also a student. If this was his plan, he failed. The marriage went ahead, and the son Thomas, later Earl of Exeter, was born in 1542. Poor Mary died two years later, the one romantic episode in William’s life was over. However, he remained in touch with his mother-in-law and his wife's brother John who became tutor to the Prince of Wales.
In Tudor times, widows and widowers generally remarried fairly quickly. William Cecil was no exception. In 1545, less than two years after Mary's death, William married Mildred, the eldest of the five daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall, Essex. Roger Ascham praised her as one of the two most learned ladies in England. Many years later, the bequest in her will included books in Hebrew to Cambridge University and books in Greek to St. John's. We know she would read Greek, one wonders whether she could read Hebrew as well. A poem in praise of eight ladies of Queen Elizabeth Court describes her as follows:
Cooke is comely and thereto,
In book sets all her care,
In learning with the Roman dames,
Of right she may compare.
Cecil's biographer points out rather unkindly that comely is not too flattering in Elizabethan speech, but you may like to look at her portrait a little later and decide for yourself. Mildred’s family like Mary's were Puritan and she brought a strong Puritan influence in Into her husband's life. Her father Sir Anthony Cooke was preceptor to the young King Edward VI, another useful contact at court for William Cecil. It was probably his relationship with Cooke and his friendship with another Cambridge man, Sir Thomas Smith, which gave Cecil the opportunity to enter the service and the young King’s uncle Lord Protector Somerset in 1547. And in 1550 he became a Privy Counsellor and was appointed one of the Secretaries of State. From 1550 until his death in 1598 he continued to serve the Tudor monarchy. In Edward VI's reign, he served both Somerset and Northumberland, and under the Catholic Mary he remained in England, unlike his brother-in- law John Cooke, and his father- in- law Anthony Cooke, both of whom went into exile on the Continent. Throughout his life he remained loyal to the legitimate sovereign. He put country before religion and would not rebel against hands anointed. For Cecil, under Mary, this meant that like his future sovereign, Elizabeth, he conformed and attended mass. As Elton writes of them “The two had much in common. Both were by nature secular, holding religion to be a matter of conscience which need not interfere with affairs of state, though Elizabeth may have gone further than Cecil who held to a moderate but consistent Protestantism”. They saw no need to suffer martyrdom under a Catholic monarch and throughout Elizabeth’s reign they tried to avoid inflicting martyrdom on others. Cecil did take one step which helped him to keep on good terms with the Protestant exiles during Mary's reign - he spoke up in defence of their retaining their property - but otherwise he was careful not to upset the Government. On the 20th of November 1558, three days after her accession, Elizabeth held her first Council meeting at Hatfield and she formally appointed William Cecil as her Principal Secretary and Privy Counsellor. Her remarks to him have survived “I give you this charge that you shall be of my Privy Council and content to take have for me and my realm this judgement I have of you that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gift and that you will be faithful to the state ; and that without respect of my private will , you will give that council which you think best and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy you shall show it to myself only and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity there in and therefore here with I charge you”.
Elizabeth’s trust in Cecil was well placed. His wisdom and patriotism were beyond question and although the administration of government was riddled with corruption he never let his advice to the Queen be influenced by prospects of gain like all other politicians and civil servants of the day, he accepted gratuities, but by the standards of the day he was an upright man.
With his son Robert took over as master of the court of wards, the office which administered the feudal rights of the Crown, corruption increased considerably.
In the eyes of one of Cecil's contemporaries the duty of the secretary was to act as the chief administrative officer of the Crown. He dealt with the Queen and with the rest of the Privy Council and tried to see that the Commons carried out Queen's wishes. According to the entry in the recent “History of Parliament” there can be little doubt that Cecil played an important part in drafting the bulk of the Royal supremacy in the church and in religion and in piloting these bills through the Commons. It is impossible to discuss attitude to all the problems of Queen's reign, what further reforms, if any, should be made in church doctrine and practice, whether the Queen should marry and if so who should she marry, should England support the Dutch rebels against Philip of Spain, and so on. It is however worth looking at a report by a Spanish envoy which shows the divisions which generally existed within the Privy Council. One of the major issues which divided the council during the 1570s and 80s was whether to give open support to the Dutch in their struggle for independence against Spain. There was a “peace party” headed by Burghley and a “war party” led by the Earl of Leicester with the support of Walsingham. Bernardino de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador, wrote to King Philip in the following terms …”It was the Queen’s policy to listen to both sides and then make her own decision”. Cecil respected the Queen’s right to make her own decisions, even if he feared that sometimes they were mistaken and no good would come of it. The end of his life he wrote to his son Richard “I do hold and will always this course in such matters as I differ in opinion from her Majesty's as long as I may be allowed to give advice I will not change my opinion by affirming the contrary , for that were to offend God, to whom I am sworn first; but as a servant I will obey her Majesty's commandments and no wise contrary the same, presuming that she being God’s chief minister here , it shall be God’s will to have her commandments obeyed.
In 1571, Elizabeth raised Cecil to the peerage as Baron of Burghley and the following year he became Lord Treasurer, and office which had been held by William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester. Paulet was one of the most distinguished of the civil servants who concentrated on administrative efficiency and financial reform and somehow managed to disregard the political upheavals of the time. He had served Henry the eighth, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth and accounted for his survival explained that he was carved from the Willow not the Oak. Men like Paulet might not the heroic figures, but they provided the government with a much needed stability. Burghley, when he took over the administration of the Royal finances, carried on with the existing system and may made no attempts at change. As a result of this,his change of office, Burghley was freed of many of the day to day administrative duties which had been his secretary will stop as Lord treasurer, an office which he held until his death in 1598, he had overall responsibility for the national finances and he became more of an elder statesman. He had a little more time to devote to his own interests. Like many of his contemporaries, he was passionately interested in building and as his biographer rather unkindly writes he built three pretentious mansions, Burghley House near Stamford, Cecil house in London and now in the later years of his life Theobolds in Hertfordshire. Theobolds was apparently a most magnificent house and here Burghley had the honour of receiving ten or more visits from the Queen, at huge cost to himself. Neither Theobalds nor Cecil’s London house have as survived, but in the case of Burghley house we are more fortunate. He commenced the rebuilding of the house his father had acquired as early as Mary's reign though he didn't finish it till the 1580s. Burghley was personally very interested in architecture and both Burghley and Theobolds show the influence of the original Somerset House built by Burghley's first patron, the Duke of Somerset.
Pevsner believes that the kitchen was one of the earliest parts of the house and writes that its gothic character would fit a large and utilitarian piece of work of the 1550s. The hall too seems to belong to the early period of building and Pevsner suggests that its fireplace, which is more classical in style, may be an “afterthought”.
The West front represents a later stage in the building and bears the date 1577. Again, I refer to the invaluable Pevsner, who describes it more conventionally Tudor in plan than the South and North fronts. The North facade is dated 1587, which indicates that Cecil's rebuilding work at Burghley spanned a period of something like 30 years. The very splendor of the house seems to indicate that Burghley, despite his relative honesty, had grown wealthy in the service of the Crown.
In spite of the extent of his official duties, Burghley appears to have made time for his family. He was greatly attached to his mother and regarded Burghley as her property until her death in 1588 they must have been sad years for Burghley. In 1589 he lost his second wife, Mildred, the formidable lady to whom he had been married for over 40 years. Both his daughters were dead, his favourite, Ann, whose marriage to the Earl of Oxford had been dreadfully unhappy, died a few months after his mother. Years earlier, when Ann was a little girl, her father had written her touchingly bad New Year’s poem, which has survived among her papers.
Of Burghley's immediate family only his two sons, Thomas and Robert, remained and much of Burghley's last year was spent in grooming Robert to take over his responsibilities. Robert was appointed Principal Secretary in 1596, two years later Burghley's health deteriorated seriously. In June July 1598 in the last letter which he wrote to his son Robert in his own hand, he described the kindness of the Queen who had fed him with her own princely hand as a careful nurse. On 4th of August 1598Bburghley died. A long and fruitful partnership between Queen and minister was over.
Walter Mildmay , unlike Burghley and Hatton, was not linked by birth with this area. Before the establishment of parish registers it is often impossible to discover the date of birth of even the most eminent men. In Mildmay’s case all that can be said is that he was born before 1523, the fourth son of Thomas Mildmay of Chelmsford, Essex. He was educated at Christ College, Cambridge and like Cecil was later admitted to Grey’s Inn, an institution which became very popular with the Puritan gentry of Northamptonshire. Like Paulet, Mildmay’s life was spent as a civil servant in the financial Department of the Crown, first in the Court of Arrangements and later at the Exchequer. Although he is remembered for his Puritan sympathies, he continued throughout Mary's reign to serve the Crown as a civil servant and Parliamentarian. His career in the public service started in 1545, the end of Henry VIII’s reign, and he made his last appearance in parliament in 1589 about 6 weeks before his death. Although his career in the Royal service and in Parliament must have kept him in London for much of the time, he displayed close associations with Northamptonshire. He obtained Apethorpe Hall and some property in Oundle in 1550 and from 1558 until his death he sat in Parliament for one of the Northamptonshire seats.
Little is known about his private life, though a journal of his daughter-in- law Grace Sherrington gives some idea what life was like in the strict Puritan household at Apethorpe. The household was presided over by Mldmay’s wife Mary, the sister of a well know Puritan, Sir Francis Walsingham, who according to Grace taught her “to become a faithful wife unto her son”: Grace was only 16 when she was married to Anthony Milday, who was apparently not very keen on the marriage and left her at Apethorpe whilst he went off to Court. All she says about her mother-in-law was that she was and dutiful to her husband, but she seems to have advised her father-in-law. On her wedding day, Sir Walter gave Grace a ring with the words “Maneat inviolate fides” and the comment she made shows that she understood the Latin. In a passage in her memoirs she describes how her days were spent when she finally became mistress of Apethorpe. She was famous for the skill she showed in the management of the house and the estate.
Clearly religion played an important part in Sir Walter Mildmay’s life. Although he had stayed in England throughout Mary's reign, he was on close terms with those who had gone into exile in Calvino, Geneva and elsewhere. His belief in the importance of education is characteristic of the Puritan. As early as 1548 he became involved in the affairs of the school in Oundle through his appointment as one of two Commissioners for the Continuance of Schools and Walker believes that ”The continuance of Oundle School was partly due to Mildmay” There are a number of later instances of an interest in what had become Laxton School; in 1584 he asked that two, what we should call postgraduate, scholarships established by the Grocer's Company be awarded to scholars for his college at Cambridge. 1584 was the year in which Sir Walter Mildmay founded Emmanuel College Cambridge to supply a learned and godly ministry and an aim which was close to his heart. When he died five years later, he left bequests to Emmanuel College and to the “poor preachers” of Northamptonshire. He remembered by name two ministers, one of whom, Clark, was almost certainly Hugh Clark, curate of Oundle.
I can't help feeling that Mildmay was probably largely responsible for the Puritan tradition in Oundle which later led to the establishment of a strong independent church here in the 18th century. Mildmay’s sympathies with Puritans struck a chord in many of his contemporaries and together with his loyalty to the monarchy and his proven financial ability how to make him in later years leading Privy Councilor in the House of Commons. When the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, Mildmay’s position was much eased by his puritan friends return from exile. His contemporary Cambridge, Sir William Cecil, became Principal Secretary and he himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position which he retained until his death over 30 years later. Although he was not responsible for deciding overall financial policy, he sat on all the important commissions such as that which considered recoinage and the sale of Crown lands. After Mildmay became a Privy Councilor in 1566 he became much more active in parliament and from the mid 1570’s acted as one of the government spokesmen in the Commons. With his knowledge of finance he was well equipped to put the government case for generous grant of taxes. A brief quotation from one of his speeches demonstrates the quality of his oratory. In religion he tried to steer a reasonable course between his official position as a Privy Councilor and support from for Puritan initiatives for further reform. One of the causes dearest to his heart was the provision of a learned ministry, with a plentiful supply of well-educated preachers, hence his foundation of Emmanuel College, designed to fill just that need. Mildmay’s will, drawn up shortly before his death, is a worthy reflection of his religious faith. He desired his executors “to avoid such vast funeral pomp as they would by custom in the time of darkness have long used, a thing most unfit for as Christians that do profess sincerely the Gospel.”
What a vivid contrast to the huge monument to his son Anthony which dominates Apethorpe church.
Sir Christopher Hatton, the third of these eminent Elizabethans who is born at Holdenby circa 1540. Hatton's were originally a Cheshire family who settled in Northamptonshire during the previous century. Hatton differs from Burghley and Mildmay in several respects. He was educated at Oxford, not Cambridge, and spent a short time at the Inner Temple. It was said that he had been brought up a Catholic and certainly he remained a conservative in religion, unsympathetic to further Puritan reforms. He was a courtier rather than a civil servant and he is said to have first attracted the Queen’s notice by his appearance and elegant dancing in a masque at Court. It must however be stressed that Hatton had a great deal more than good looks and the accomplishments of a courtier to commend him to the Queen. Although as one jealous contemporary wrote “Elizabeth loved those who were perfumed and courtly please her delicate eye, meaning dancers and meaning Lord Leicester and Mr Hatton”. She was a very shrewd woman and would never have appointed Hatton to high office on the strength of his looks alone. Hatton was approximately 20 years younger than Burghley and Mildmay and had no experience of public life before Elizabeth's accession. He became a gentleman pursuivant(?) in 1564 and was subsequently made a gentleman of the privy chamber and captain of the guard, and in 1577 Vice- Chamberlain. He was first elected to Parliament in 1571 as the member for Higham Ferrers and in the Parliament of 1572 and subsequent Parliaments he was one of the County members for Northamptonshire. He must have been a very busy man. From 1564 onwards he was in almost daily attendance on the Queen, in addition to which he became increasingly involved in parliamentary duties. In 1576 he served on innumerable committees and the following year he was appointed to the Privy Council. In subsequent Parliaments he acted as spokesman for the government on a number of occasions, showing his grasp of affairs and his ability to handle the Commons on sensitive issues. When threatened by the Puritans with further expensive reform, he shrewdly pointed out that the cost of paying more pastors, etc., might put at risk the monastic property which many of the members enjoyed. “They set it down he said that we are bound to surrender out of our hands our abbey lands and much other possessions as have at any time belong to the church” -Surely a winning point!
Shortly after this remarkable speech Hatton was elevated to the position of Lord Chancellor and in 1587 left the Commons for the Lords. It was a surprising appointment and one which annoyed the lawyers, as Hatton had studied the law only briefly, and was not a professional lawyer. He was nevertheless a very good Lord Chancellor. Cordon wrote that “what he wanted in knowledge of the law he laboured to make good by equity and justice”, a view endorsed by Professor Elton who considered that Hatton turned out a very sensible Chancellor; he used his common sense where it sufficed and where it did not, he adjourned the case until he could have consulted the experts.
In the 1589 Parliament, Hatton delivered the opening speech, an oration celebrating the defeat of the Armada and appealing to the patriotism of his hearers in five ringing phrases. After stressing the need for further defensive measures he went on in the words of which Churchill might have been proud “England hath been accounted hitherto to the most renowned Kingdom for valour and manhood in all Christendom and shall we now lose our own reputation? If we should, it had been better for England we had never been born”. No wonder Hatton was an asset to the Government – unfortunately, his tenure of the Lord Chancellorship was brief and ended with his death in 1591 at the relatively early age of 51.
The Queen visited him several times during his last illness and is said to have fed him with her own hands. He died in London at Ely House, Hatton Garden in November 1591 and is buried in St. Paul's. At the time of his death Hatton was heavily in debt to the Queen and others. His financial problems started quite early - by 1575 the year in which he acquired Kirby he already owed 10,000 pounds. His finances deteriorated steadily, despite the fact he invested successfully in Drake’s voyage around the world. Drake’s ship, the Pelican, was renamed the Golden Hind, a reference to Hatton's coat of arms. Hatton was steward of Wellingborough and the old coaching in there has been long known by the name of “The Hind”, similarly another reference to the Hatton family.
Kirby, a splendid mansion which was started by its previous owners the Stafford's and completed by Hatton, now belongs to the Department of the Environment and will be known to many of you. It was not however Hatton’s only building venture. Around 1578 he started to build another magnificent house on his family estate at Holdenby with the express purpose of entertaining the Queen in suitable splendour. Although Hatton entertained lavishly at Holdenby on the rare occasions when he could spare time away from London, Elizabeth never came. All of the expense had been in vain. Furthermore, he could not console himself with the thought that he was building for posterity as he never married and had no children to inherit his estates. Little survives of Hatton's buildings at Holdenby – it was demolished during the Commonwealth -but surviving correspondence of Burghley's throw some light on its appearance and incidentally highlights the cordial relationship existing between Burghley, Mildmay and Hatton. In a letter to Walsingham, Burghley writes “I pray you tell the Vice Chamberlain [Hatton] that Mr. Chancellor [Mildmay] and I on our way out of Northampton mean to survey his house at Holdenby and when we have done, fill our bellies with his meat and sleep also, as the proverb is, our bellies full all Monday night”. Hatton, who could not get away from London had asked Burghley to let him know how the building, which he described as “a young Theobolds”, was progressing. Burghley’s account is full of enthusiasm “I found no one thing of greater grace than your stately ascent from your hall to your great chamber” he ended with the wish “God send as long to enjoy her [Elizabeth’s], for whom we both meant to exceed our purses in these [our respective buildings].
Poor Hatton - he spent all that money to no purpose, but it is pleasant to discuss that away from all the inevitable rivalry and backbiting of Court these three ministers were in such friendly terms. Even a brief look at the careers of these three Elizabethan statesmen helps to show what a lot of steady hard work lay behind this splendour of Gloriana’s Court. Both the Queen and the ministers she chose so skillfully showed a constant attention to the business of government - without this - and the outstanding statesmanship of the Queen herself - there would have been no Elizabethan age.
Julia Moss
(Undated)
References:
W.H. Charlton “The Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley”
Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton
Sir John Neale “Queen Elizabeth”
“The Elizabethan House of Commons”
“Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments”
Nikolous Pevsner “The Buildings of England -Northamptonshire” 1973
Joel Hurstfield “Burghley: The Power Behind the Throne” 1956
John Walker
By Julia Moss
Queen Elizabeth is one of the best-known figures in English history and so much has been written about her that all of us have formed our own picture of this outstanding and successful monarch.
For over 40 years, from her accession in 1558 to her death in 1603 Elizabeth remained the dominant figure on the English political scene - she has given her name to an age, a fact which may make us forget that she never acted, never could act, in isolation. She chose her ministers and they gave her devoted service and in return she had to consider their advice. There were outside courtiers also. As she herself said in one of her last speeches to Parliament “and though God has raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your loves”. It was the duty of these influential men who surrounded her, members of her Privy Council for the most part, to give her all possible help and, as you can see from the speech I have just quoted, by and large they succeeded magnificently. Most of these men including the three I want to discuss now, Sir William Cecil of Burghley, Sir Walter Mildmay and Sir Christopher Hatton, were members of the Queen's Privy Council. At that time, the Privy Council played a vital part in the government of the country. The Tudor historian Elton goes so far as to write that the Queen reigned, and though the Queen may even have ruled, it was the Privy Council that governed. In Elizabethan times the council was a small group of men, normally 18 in number, sometimes as few as 12, but their importance was enormous. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was a Privy Councillor, so for a short period was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and more important if less aristocratic men like Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Nicholas Bacon. Why then did I choose Cecil, Mildmay and Hatton? Well, William Cecil, Lord Burghley was an obvious choice. From the day of Elizabeth accession in November 1558, when she appointed him her principal secretary, until his death 40 years later Queen and Cecil worked together as a team and to quote Elton again “As a team they were superb”. Apart from his distinction as a statesman, I had a more personal reason for my interest in Burghley. He was a man with shining local connection; it was this factor too, which made me decide to focus my attention on Sir Walter Mildmay of Apethorpe and Oundle (he owned a house in West Street) and on Christopher Hatton of Holdenby and Kirby Hall, rather than on Walsingham and Nicholas Bacon, or any of the other prominent Privy Councillors of the reign.
Before going on to discuss Burghley and his two fellow counsellors, I want to say a little about the country they governed and the Queen they served. To start with, what was the size of the population? Without census figures, we can only make a very vague guess. To quote Hurstfield, who spent a life studying Tudor England, we should probably not be far wrong if we said that at the beginning of the reign it was far less than a tenth of what it is today at the end of the reign somewhat more than on a tenth. A broad guess would take up somewhere between three and five million. Small though this population seems to us the farming methods were primitive and in years of bad harvest the country couldn't feed itself. In the late 1590s after three successive years of bad harvests, there was widespread famine on the scale we now associate with developing countries. England was still largely an agrarian society. There were some important towns, ports such as Bristol and Hull, cloth towns like Beverley and Norwich, cathedral cities like York and Winchester, but, with the exception of London, they were not much bigger than medium sized market towns of today. For much of the population much of the time it was a period of growth and prosperity and increasing natural self-confidence. This self-confidence is reflected in popular ballads, one of which I found under the modern heading “Pop poetry: late Elizabethan” which I thought a delightful description.
The growing prosperity and self-confidence led to an increase in the amount of building. One contemporary, a Bishop, wrote “Englishmen indulge in the pleasures as if they were to die tomorrow and build as if they were to live forever” and Northamptonshire, the fashionable County in those days, illustrates the truth of this statement. Cecil's house at Burghley and Kirby Hall, one of Hatton's two grand houses, are good examples of this Tudor passion for building on a grand scale.
Local differences between north and south, the centre and the periphery, are highlighted by poor communications. It was certainly a north south divide in the 16th century and Elizabeth never ventured far north on her summer progresses. Use of the word “country” where we would say “county” seems to me to typify this intense local feeling. People below the rank of the gentry and merchants generally had little occasion or opportunity to move more than a few miles from their own village. As you can see from the careers of Burghley, Mildmay and Hatton the upper classes were more mobile. They often spent some time studying at Oxford or Cambridge and might go onto one of the Inns of Court to gain some knowledge of the law. Some of them went abroad on missions of war or diplomacy and many of them spent considerable periods of time in London at the Queen’s Court or as members of Parliament. It was a time when patronage was of enormous importance in all aspects of society. Although the monarch was the principal dispenser of patronage; leading nobleman and royal servants such as Leicester and Burghley also controlled a vast amount of patronage. As Sir John Neale wrote “If it is possible -and I imagine that the biographical approach would alone make it possible - I should like to discover through whose influence every Elizabethan official got his job; to find out in which great courtier’s orbit he moved”. It was not just officials and parliamentarians who needed a patron. Artists, dramatists and even Puritan preachers required patrons and I was interested and a little surprised to discover that the Earl of Leicester was a great patron of Puritan divines. In reply to a Puritan who had rebuked him -as Puritans often did (they even rebuked the Queen) – he wrote “Besides, who in England both had or half more learned chaplains belonging to him then I, or have preferred more to the furtherance of the church of learned preachers”.
Patronage also played an important part in the composition of parliament [In the parliaments of the mid 80s, Lord Burghley’s nominees totalled twenty six, including his younger son Robert who had a distinguished career ahead of him]. Only rarely, were members of parliament chosen by elections. In the borough seats, the patron often nominated the member, or the local oligarchy made the choice.
In the counties, agreement had to be arrived at between different groups or factions of the nobility and gentry as to who should represent the area. In the course of the reign, Cecil, Mildmay and Hatton all held one of the two Northamptonshire County seats. Mildmay began as a borough remember in 1545, way back in Henry the eighth reign and sat in 12 parliaments altogether, so by the time he died in 1589 he had a vast amount of parliamentary experience. In the 16th century parliament was in a state of transition. As Sir John Neale writes in his great work Elizabeth and her Parliament. “At the opening of the 16th century, Parliament was essentially a legislative and taxing body, its meetings intermittent. Even at the end of the century the same description might be formally applied to it; but in the meanwhile, it had become a practical force with which the Crown and government had to reckon”.
Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, many activities were supposedly outside its jurisdiction, including the succession, a very sensitive area, foreign policy, the declaration of war and peace - and the Queen’s opinion - ecclesiastical doctrine and practice; these were views to which some of the more militant Puritans such as Peter Wentworth could never subscribe. [This champion of Parliamentary free speech – the Dennis Skinner of his age - claimed “all matters that concern God’s honour through free speech shall be propagated here and set forward and all things that do hinder it removed, repulsed and taken away”.] Yet so great was his devotion to the Queen that on one occasion when a clerk, for the sake of brevity, wanted to write simply “Queen Elizabeth”, Wentworth was extremely angry. “What!” he exclaimed, “Shall we not acknowledge her to be our Sovereign Lady? This is well indeed! I think some of us are wary of her. I am not wary of her for my part, and therefore I will have it set down “Our Sovereign Lady”.
Throughout her reign, however much she might differ from them, Elizabeth kept the loyalty of the bulk of her subjects. After the dynastic upheavals of the 15th century, the so-called Wars of the Roses, and the religious turmoil of the reign of Edward VI and Mary, Elizabeth gave the country stability. At a time when successful women rulers were almost unknown. She gave the country what it needed - a sovereign who could act as a unifying force. She must have been a remarkable woman. Some valuable accounts of English affairs in the 16th century have been left to us by Venetian ambassadors, one of whom wrote that whenever the English see a handsome foreigner, that they say he looks like an Englishman. I couldn't resist this delightful observation but more relevant is the portraits of Elizabeth as a young girl, drawn by the Venetian ambassador in 1557.
Another shrewd foreign observer, the Spanish Count of Feria wrote to his master King Philip “She is a very vain woman but a very acute one”.
The Venetian ambassador in his account of the Princess Elizabeth and her sister Queen Mary (Tudor), emphasised their knowledge of foreign language, ancient and modern. Of Mary he writes “She understands five languages, English, Latin, French, Spanish and Italian” and of Elizabeth “In her knowledge of the Greek and Italian languages she surpasses the Queen”. Here they benefited from the Renaissance attitude to the education of women. Men are different, as the Catholic martyr Sir Thomas Moore, and Burghley 's father-in-law the staunch puritan Sir Anthony Cooke, had daughters who were famed for their learning. Cooke believed that “sexes is as well as souls are equal in capacity”. Elizabeth’s early studies meant that later when she became Queen, she was able to bring to the business of Government a trained mind. Her knowledge of Latin, French and Italian and her understanding of Spanish help to explain her control of foreign policy. As Sir John Neale writes “As a woman in the age of John Knox she would have been hard put too it to direct policy, had she not been as able as the best of her counsellors, and more able than most of them, to conduct the interviews with foreign ambassadors”. In 1597, in the Queen’s old age, her knowledge of Latin stood her in good stead. Hurstfield describes the way in which she dealt with an important impertinent foreign ambassador who dared to attack her in public.
Clearly Elizabeth was a woman of formidable intellect, but who were her tutors? Here she was very fortunate. The tutors of both Elizabeth and her brother, the young Edward VI, we're both members of that group of Cambridge humanists who were to play such an important part in her reign. Edward’s tutor was John Cheke, a brilliant young Greek scholar from St. John’s College Cambridge. While he was not at St. John’s, John Cheke had been the tutor and close friend of young William Cecil - who had fallen in love with and married Cheke’s sister Mary. Elizabeth’s tutor was Roger Aschlaw, another pupil of Cheke’s and it was Aschlaw who wrote “Her mind have no womanly weakness, perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up”. Her encounter with the Polish ambassador certainly demonstrated the truth of the last point of this statement. These Cambridge contacts provided an early link between Elizabeth and a number of the men who later became her trusted advisors, including William Cecil, whose career I now want to discuss.
William Cecil was born in September 1520 at Bourne in Lincolnshire at the home of his maternal grandfather. He was born into a family which had risen in the service of the Tudors. Despite considerable effort on William’s part, it proved impossible to trace his father’s family back any further than his grandfather, David Cecil, a Yeoman from the Welsh borders who served Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field and later settled at Stamford. He continued in the service of Henry VII and Henry VIII, married well and became an MP and Sheriff of Northamptonshire. His son Richard, Williams father, seems to have carried on where his father David left off. He too was around the court, first as a royal page, then present in some capacity at the Field of the Cloth of Gold where Henry VIII met Francis I in surroundings of great splendour. Richard married Jane Heckington, a Lincolnshire heiress, a prudent match no doubt. He became groom of the robes and constable of Warwick Castle. He acquired property in Rutland and Northamptonshire, including the little Burghley estate, where the family lived, and William was later to build the magnificent Burghley House.
It was the efforts of his father and grandfathers which provided the springboard for William Cecil's career. He was educated at the grammar schools of Grantham and Stamford and in 1535 he entered St. John’s College Cambridge at the age of 15. Among his contemporaries at Cambridge were such men as Nicholas Bacon, who became Elizabeth’s first Lord Keeper. Bacon’s wife, Anne Cooke, was a sister of Cecil's second wife Mildred. The contacts and relationships which Cecil made at Cambridge were to be vitally important to him in later life. When you look at Elizabeth’s councilors, you are struck by the close ties between them, ties in which marriage played an important part. Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, father of the more famous Francis Bacon, were brothers-in-law. Mildmay was married to Mary one of the sisters of Sir Francis Walsingham. Another Walsingham sister was married to the outspoken puritan parliamentarian Peter Wentworth. The Elizabethan ruling class was small and close knit, often bound even closer by family ties, which were enormously important in the period when patronage was so central to public life.
All this however was in the future. While William was at Cambridge he fell in love with Mary Cheke, the sister of his friend and Greek tutor John Cheke, and shortly after leaving Cambridge in 1541, he married her. This first marriage must have been a love match as Mary’s only fortune was £40, and her widowed mother kept a wine shop, none of which pleased William’s father. He may even have hoped to prevent the marriage by removing William from Cambridge and entering him at Greys Inn, where Mildmay was also a student. If this was his plan, he failed. The marriage went ahead, and the son Thomas, later Earl of Exeter, was born in 1542. Poor Mary died two years later, the one romantic episode in William’s life was over. However, he remained in touch with his mother-in-law and his wife's brother John who became tutor to the Prince of Wales.
In Tudor times, widows and widowers generally remarried fairly quickly. William Cecil was no exception. In 1545, less than two years after Mary's death, William married Mildred, the eldest of the five daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall, Essex. Roger Ascham praised her as one of the two most learned ladies in England. Many years later, the bequest in her will included books in Hebrew to Cambridge University and books in Greek to St. John's. We know she would read Greek, one wonders whether she could read Hebrew as well. A poem in praise of eight ladies of Queen Elizabeth Court describes her as follows:
Cooke is comely and thereto,
In book sets all her care,
In learning with the Roman dames,
Of right she may compare.
Cecil's biographer points out rather unkindly that comely is not too flattering in Elizabethan speech, but you may like to look at her portrait a little later and decide for yourself. Mildred’s family like Mary's were Puritan and she brought a strong Puritan influence in Into her husband's life. Her father Sir Anthony Cooke was preceptor to the young King Edward VI, another useful contact at court for William Cecil. It was probably his relationship with Cooke and his friendship with another Cambridge man, Sir Thomas Smith, which gave Cecil the opportunity to enter the service and the young King’s uncle Lord Protector Somerset in 1547. And in 1550 he became a Privy Counsellor and was appointed one of the Secretaries of State. From 1550 until his death in 1598 he continued to serve the Tudor monarchy. In Edward VI's reign, he served both Somerset and Northumberland, and under the Catholic Mary he remained in England, unlike his brother-in- law John Cooke, and his father- in- law Anthony Cooke, both of whom went into exile on the Continent. Throughout his life he remained loyal to the legitimate sovereign. He put country before religion and would not rebel against hands anointed. For Cecil, under Mary, this meant that like his future sovereign, Elizabeth, he conformed and attended mass. As Elton writes of them “The two had much in common. Both were by nature secular, holding religion to be a matter of conscience which need not interfere with affairs of state, though Elizabeth may have gone further than Cecil who held to a moderate but consistent Protestantism”. They saw no need to suffer martyrdom under a Catholic monarch and throughout Elizabeth’s reign they tried to avoid inflicting martyrdom on others. Cecil did take one step which helped him to keep on good terms with the Protestant exiles during Mary's reign - he spoke up in defence of their retaining their property - but otherwise he was careful not to upset the Government. On the 20th of November 1558, three days after her accession, Elizabeth held her first Council meeting at Hatfield and she formally appointed William Cecil as her Principal Secretary and Privy Counsellor. Her remarks to him have survived “I give you this charge that you shall be of my Privy Council and content to take have for me and my realm this judgement I have of you that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gift and that you will be faithful to the state ; and that without respect of my private will , you will give that council which you think best and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy you shall show it to myself only and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity there in and therefore here with I charge you”.
Elizabeth’s trust in Cecil was well placed. His wisdom and patriotism were beyond question and although the administration of government was riddled with corruption he never let his advice to the Queen be influenced by prospects of gain like all other politicians and civil servants of the day, he accepted gratuities, but by the standards of the day he was an upright man.
With his son Robert took over as master of the court of wards, the office which administered the feudal rights of the Crown, corruption increased considerably.
In the eyes of one of Cecil's contemporaries the duty of the secretary was to act as the chief administrative officer of the Crown. He dealt with the Queen and with the rest of the Privy Council and tried to see that the Commons carried out Queen's wishes. According to the entry in the recent “History of Parliament” there can be little doubt that Cecil played an important part in drafting the bulk of the Royal supremacy in the church and in religion and in piloting these bills through the Commons. It is impossible to discuss attitude to all the problems of Queen's reign, what further reforms, if any, should be made in church doctrine and practice, whether the Queen should marry and if so who should she marry, should England support the Dutch rebels against Philip of Spain, and so on. It is however worth looking at a report by a Spanish envoy which shows the divisions which generally existed within the Privy Council. One of the major issues which divided the council during the 1570s and 80s was whether to give open support to the Dutch in their struggle for independence against Spain. There was a “peace party” headed by Burghley and a “war party” led by the Earl of Leicester with the support of Walsingham. Bernardino de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador, wrote to King Philip in the following terms …”It was the Queen’s policy to listen to both sides and then make her own decision”. Cecil respected the Queen’s right to make her own decisions, even if he feared that sometimes they were mistaken and no good would come of it. The end of his life he wrote to his son Richard “I do hold and will always this course in such matters as I differ in opinion from her Majesty's as long as I may be allowed to give advice I will not change my opinion by affirming the contrary , for that were to offend God, to whom I am sworn first; but as a servant I will obey her Majesty's commandments and no wise contrary the same, presuming that she being God’s chief minister here , it shall be God’s will to have her commandments obeyed.
In 1571, Elizabeth raised Cecil to the peerage as Baron of Burghley and the following year he became Lord Treasurer, and office which had been held by William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester. Paulet was one of the most distinguished of the civil servants who concentrated on administrative efficiency and financial reform and somehow managed to disregard the political upheavals of the time. He had served Henry the eighth, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth and accounted for his survival explained that he was carved from the Willow not the Oak. Men like Paulet might not the heroic figures, but they provided the government with a much needed stability. Burghley, when he took over the administration of the Royal finances, carried on with the existing system and may made no attempts at change. As a result of this,his change of office, Burghley was freed of many of the day to day administrative duties which had been his secretary will stop as Lord treasurer, an office which he held until his death in 1598, he had overall responsibility for the national finances and he became more of an elder statesman. He had a little more time to devote to his own interests. Like many of his contemporaries, he was passionately interested in building and as his biographer rather unkindly writes he built three pretentious mansions, Burghley House near Stamford, Cecil house in London and now in the later years of his life Theobolds in Hertfordshire. Theobolds was apparently a most magnificent house and here Burghley had the honour of receiving ten or more visits from the Queen, at huge cost to himself. Neither Theobalds nor Cecil’s London house have as survived, but in the case of Burghley house we are more fortunate. He commenced the rebuilding of the house his father had acquired as early as Mary's reign though he didn't finish it till the 1580s. Burghley was personally very interested in architecture and both Burghley and Theobolds show the influence of the original Somerset House built by Burghley's first patron, the Duke of Somerset.
Pevsner believes that the kitchen was one of the earliest parts of the house and writes that its gothic character would fit a large and utilitarian piece of work of the 1550s. The hall too seems to belong to the early period of building and Pevsner suggests that its fireplace, which is more classical in style, may be an “afterthought”.
The West front represents a later stage in the building and bears the date 1577. Again, I refer to the invaluable Pevsner, who describes it more conventionally Tudor in plan than the South and North fronts. The North facade is dated 1587, which indicates that Cecil's rebuilding work at Burghley spanned a period of something like 30 years. The very splendor of the house seems to indicate that Burghley, despite his relative honesty, had grown wealthy in the service of the Crown.
In spite of the extent of his official duties, Burghley appears to have made time for his family. He was greatly attached to his mother and regarded Burghley as her property until her death in 1588 they must have been sad years for Burghley. In 1589 he lost his second wife, Mildred, the formidable lady to whom he had been married for over 40 years. Both his daughters were dead, his favourite, Ann, whose marriage to the Earl of Oxford had been dreadfully unhappy, died a few months after his mother. Years earlier, when Ann was a little girl, her father had written her touchingly bad New Year’s poem, which has survived among her papers.
Of Burghley's immediate family only his two sons, Thomas and Robert, remained and much of Burghley's last year was spent in grooming Robert to take over his responsibilities. Robert was appointed Principal Secretary in 1596, two years later Burghley's health deteriorated seriously. In June July 1598 in the last letter which he wrote to his son Robert in his own hand, he described the kindness of the Queen who had fed him with her own princely hand as a careful nurse. On 4th of August 1598Bburghley died. A long and fruitful partnership between Queen and minister was over.
Walter Mildmay , unlike Burghley and Hatton, was not linked by birth with this area. Before the establishment of parish registers it is often impossible to discover the date of birth of even the most eminent men. In Mildmay’s case all that can be said is that he was born before 1523, the fourth son of Thomas Mildmay of Chelmsford, Essex. He was educated at Christ College, Cambridge and like Cecil was later admitted to Grey’s Inn, an institution which became very popular with the Puritan gentry of Northamptonshire. Like Paulet, Mildmay’s life was spent as a civil servant in the financial Department of the Crown, first in the Court of Arrangements and later at the Exchequer. Although he is remembered for his Puritan sympathies, he continued throughout Mary's reign to serve the Crown as a civil servant and Parliamentarian. His career in the public service started in 1545, the end of Henry VIII’s reign, and he made his last appearance in parliament in 1589 about 6 weeks before his death. Although his career in the Royal service and in Parliament must have kept him in London for much of the time, he displayed close associations with Northamptonshire. He obtained Apethorpe Hall and some property in Oundle in 1550 and from 1558 until his death he sat in Parliament for one of the Northamptonshire seats.
Little is known about his private life, though a journal of his daughter-in- law Grace Sherrington gives some idea what life was like in the strict Puritan household at Apethorpe. The household was presided over by Mldmay’s wife Mary, the sister of a well know Puritan, Sir Francis Walsingham, who according to Grace taught her “to become a faithful wife unto her son”: Grace was only 16 when she was married to Anthony Milday, who was apparently not very keen on the marriage and left her at Apethorpe whilst he went off to Court. All she says about her mother-in-law was that she was and dutiful to her husband, but she seems to have advised her father-in-law. On her wedding day, Sir Walter gave Grace a ring with the words “Maneat inviolate fides” and the comment she made shows that she understood the Latin. In a passage in her memoirs she describes how her days were spent when she finally became mistress of Apethorpe. She was famous for the skill she showed in the management of the house and the estate.
Clearly religion played an important part in Sir Walter Mildmay’s life. Although he had stayed in England throughout Mary's reign, he was on close terms with those who had gone into exile in Calvino, Geneva and elsewhere. His belief in the importance of education is characteristic of the Puritan. As early as 1548 he became involved in the affairs of the school in Oundle through his appointment as one of two Commissioners for the Continuance of Schools and Walker believes that ”The continuance of Oundle School was partly due to Mildmay” There are a number of later instances of an interest in what had become Laxton School; in 1584 he asked that two, what we should call postgraduate, scholarships established by the Grocer's Company be awarded to scholars for his college at Cambridge. 1584 was the year in which Sir Walter Mildmay founded Emmanuel College Cambridge to supply a learned and godly ministry and an aim which was close to his heart. When he died five years later, he left bequests to Emmanuel College and to the “poor preachers” of Northamptonshire. He remembered by name two ministers, one of whom, Clark, was almost certainly Hugh Clark, curate of Oundle.
I can't help feeling that Mildmay was probably largely responsible for the Puritan tradition in Oundle which later led to the establishment of a strong independent church here in the 18th century. Mildmay’s sympathies with Puritans struck a chord in many of his contemporaries and together with his loyalty to the monarchy and his proven financial ability how to make him in later years leading Privy Councilor in the House of Commons. When the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, Mildmay’s position was much eased by his puritan friends return from exile. His contemporary Cambridge, Sir William Cecil, became Principal Secretary and he himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position which he retained until his death over 30 years later. Although he was not responsible for deciding overall financial policy, he sat on all the important commissions such as that which considered recoinage and the sale of Crown lands. After Mildmay became a Privy Councilor in 1566 he became much more active in parliament and from the mid 1570’s acted as one of the government spokesmen in the Commons. With his knowledge of finance he was well equipped to put the government case for generous grant of taxes. A brief quotation from one of his speeches demonstrates the quality of his oratory. In religion he tried to steer a reasonable course between his official position as a Privy Councilor and support from for Puritan initiatives for further reform. One of the causes dearest to his heart was the provision of a learned ministry, with a plentiful supply of well-educated preachers, hence his foundation of Emmanuel College, designed to fill just that need. Mildmay’s will, drawn up shortly before his death, is a worthy reflection of his religious faith. He desired his executors “to avoid such vast funeral pomp as they would by custom in the time of darkness have long used, a thing most unfit for as Christians that do profess sincerely the Gospel.”
What a vivid contrast to the huge monument to his son Anthony which dominates Apethorpe church.
Sir Christopher Hatton, the third of these eminent Elizabethans who is born at Holdenby circa 1540. Hatton's were originally a Cheshire family who settled in Northamptonshire during the previous century. Hatton differs from Burghley and Mildmay in several respects. He was educated at Oxford, not Cambridge, and spent a short time at the Inner Temple. It was said that he had been brought up a Catholic and certainly he remained a conservative in religion, unsympathetic to further Puritan reforms. He was a courtier rather than a civil servant and he is said to have first attracted the Queen’s notice by his appearance and elegant dancing in a masque at Court. It must however be stressed that Hatton had a great deal more than good looks and the accomplishments of a courtier to commend him to the Queen. Although as one jealous contemporary wrote “Elizabeth loved those who were perfumed and courtly please her delicate eye, meaning dancers and meaning Lord Leicester and Mr Hatton”. She was a very shrewd woman and would never have appointed Hatton to high office on the strength of his looks alone. Hatton was approximately 20 years younger than Burghley and Mildmay and had no experience of public life before Elizabeth's accession. He became a gentleman pursuivant(?) in 1564 and was subsequently made a gentleman of the privy chamber and captain of the guard, and in 1577 Vice- Chamberlain. He was first elected to Parliament in 1571 as the member for Higham Ferrers and in the Parliament of 1572 and subsequent Parliaments he was one of the County members for Northamptonshire. He must have been a very busy man. From 1564 onwards he was in almost daily attendance on the Queen, in addition to which he became increasingly involved in parliamentary duties. In 1576 he served on innumerable committees and the following year he was appointed to the Privy Council. In subsequent Parliaments he acted as spokesman for the government on a number of occasions, showing his grasp of affairs and his ability to handle the Commons on sensitive issues. When threatened by the Puritans with further expensive reform, he shrewdly pointed out that the cost of paying more pastors, etc., might put at risk the monastic property which many of the members enjoyed. “They set it down he said that we are bound to surrender out of our hands our abbey lands and much other possessions as have at any time belong to the church” -Surely a winning point!
Shortly after this remarkable speech Hatton was elevated to the position of Lord Chancellor and in 1587 left the Commons for the Lords. It was a surprising appointment and one which annoyed the lawyers, as Hatton had studied the law only briefly, and was not a professional lawyer. He was nevertheless a very good Lord Chancellor. Cordon wrote that “what he wanted in knowledge of the law he laboured to make good by equity and justice”, a view endorsed by Professor Elton who considered that Hatton turned out a very sensible Chancellor; he used his common sense where it sufficed and where it did not, he adjourned the case until he could have consulted the experts.
In the 1589 Parliament, Hatton delivered the opening speech, an oration celebrating the defeat of the Armada and appealing to the patriotism of his hearers in five ringing phrases. After stressing the need for further defensive measures he went on in the words of which Churchill might have been proud “England hath been accounted hitherto to the most renowned Kingdom for valour and manhood in all Christendom and shall we now lose our own reputation? If we should, it had been better for England we had never been born”. No wonder Hatton was an asset to the Government – unfortunately, his tenure of the Lord Chancellorship was brief and ended with his death in 1591 at the relatively early age of 51.
The Queen visited him several times during his last illness and is said to have fed him with her own hands. He died in London at Ely House, Hatton Garden in November 1591 and is buried in St. Paul's. At the time of his death Hatton was heavily in debt to the Queen and others. His financial problems started quite early - by 1575 the year in which he acquired Kirby he already owed 10,000 pounds. His finances deteriorated steadily, despite the fact he invested successfully in Drake’s voyage around the world. Drake’s ship, the Pelican, was renamed the Golden Hind, a reference to Hatton's coat of arms. Hatton was steward of Wellingborough and the old coaching in there has been long known by the name of “The Hind”, similarly another reference to the Hatton family.
Kirby, a splendid mansion which was started by its previous owners the Stafford's and completed by Hatton, now belongs to the Department of the Environment and will be known to many of you. It was not however Hatton’s only building venture. Around 1578 he started to build another magnificent house on his family estate at Holdenby with the express purpose of entertaining the Queen in suitable splendour. Although Hatton entertained lavishly at Holdenby on the rare occasions when he could spare time away from London, Elizabeth never came. All of the expense had been in vain. Furthermore, he could not console himself with the thought that he was building for posterity as he never married and had no children to inherit his estates. Little survives of Hatton's buildings at Holdenby – it was demolished during the Commonwealth -but surviving correspondence of Burghley's throw some light on its appearance and incidentally highlights the cordial relationship existing between Burghley, Mildmay and Hatton. In a letter to Walsingham, Burghley writes “I pray you tell the Vice Chamberlain [Hatton] that Mr. Chancellor [Mildmay] and I on our way out of Northampton mean to survey his house at Holdenby and when we have done, fill our bellies with his meat and sleep also, as the proverb is, our bellies full all Monday night”. Hatton, who could not get away from London had asked Burghley to let him know how the building, which he described as “a young Theobolds”, was progressing. Burghley’s account is full of enthusiasm “I found no one thing of greater grace than your stately ascent from your hall to your great chamber” he ended with the wish “God send as long to enjoy her [Elizabeth’s], for whom we both meant to exceed our purses in these [our respective buildings].
Poor Hatton - he spent all that money to no purpose, but it is pleasant to discuss that away from all the inevitable rivalry and backbiting of Court these three ministers were in such friendly terms. Even a brief look at the careers of these three Elizabethan statesmen helps to show what a lot of steady hard work lay behind this splendour of Gloriana’s Court. Both the Queen and the ministers she chose so skillfully showed a constant attention to the business of government - without this - and the outstanding statesmanship of the Queen herself - there would have been no Elizabethan age.
Julia Moss
(Undated)
References:
W.H. Charlton “The Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley”
Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton
Sir John Neale “Queen Elizabeth”
“The Elizabethan House of Commons”
“Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments”
Nikolous Pevsner “The Buildings of England -Northamptonshire” 1973
Joel Hurstfield “Burghley: The Power Behind the Throne” 1956
John Walker