New walls on old foundations

Burghley House, Lincolnshire, part I The home of Miranda and Orlando Rock This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of William Cecil, a statesman of defining importance in the nation’s history. John Goodall considers the Tudor development of the great baronial seat he created for himself

- John Goodall

AT Westminster on February 25, 1571, Elizabeth I affixed her Great Seal to an unusually elegant and richly decorated patent. It elevated her loyal servant, William Cecil, to the peerage as Baron Burghley. He was the only commoner she dignified in this way during the course of her long reign, a mark of his exceptional status in the realm. Cecil’s chosen title celebrated his connection with the place where—in his own later words—‘my principal house is and my name and posterity are to remain at God’s will and where I am no new-planted or new feathered gentleman’.

Burghley House was already a substantial residence in 1571 and one on which Cecil had previously lavished money. Nevertheless, it was in the years after his ennoblement, between 1573 and 1588, that he created much of the great building that visitors admire today. As we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Cecil’s birth, it’s worth reconsidering the story of his baronial seat. For a country house of such defining importance to our understanding of Elizabethan architecture, its early history is surprisingly exiguous and, for a house of such manifest architectural splendour and seeming coherence, it is also unexpectedly complicated.

Whether judged long or short, the Cecil family connection to the locality of Burghley dated back to the reign of Henry VII, when William’s grandfather, David Sitsylt (as the name was then spelt), transferred his interests from Herefordshire to the environs of Stamford, Lincolnshire. He became a freeman of this town on the Great North Road in 1494 and subsequently served it as an MP, too. By securing his son Richard the place of a page to Henry VIII, he effectively laid the foundations of the family’s future good fortunes.