The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

On 29 April 1612 the London letter writer John Chamberlain penned another of his regular epistles to his friend Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador in Venice. For weeks a chief news item had been the declining health of the Lord Treasurer, Robert Cecil Earl of Salisbury. ‘I wish I could send you better assurance’ Chamberlain wrote, ‘but as far as I can learn there is more cause of fear than hope’. Salisbury was journeying to Bath, where he had often sought relief before, but he had been ‘very yll by the way yesterday and was almost gon once or twise’. His death was assumed to be imminent. ‘He is alredy much lamented and every man sayes what a misse there wold be of him and indeed [he] is much prayed for’. The news later in June was more of a surprise. Salisbury's passing, on the return journey from Bath, had been followed not by the expected tributes to his irreplaceability, but by a flood of ‘outragious speaches’.

Masculinity, ambassadorial handbooks, and early modern English diplomacy

“…94 Contemporaries were often not kind to those with physical disabilities-for instance Sir Robert Cecil, secretary of state and sometime ambassador, was ridiculed for his hunched back, which his detractors linked to moral and political failings. 95 Meanwhile, Gentili both followed ancient authors in praising beauty and professed that he would not 'say what measure of good looks I demand in a man and in an ambassador', just that he should be 'of good personal appearance'. He did, however, agree with Thynne on the question of height, noting that it helped if ambassadors had, like Jerome Bowes, whom Elizabeth had sent to Muscovy, 'a tall and distinguished figure' that gave 'an immediate impression of both vigor and courtesy'.…”

Seventeenth‐Century Print Culture

“…4 Some of the most interesting and persuasive work in this vein concerned libels, a politically transgressive form associated with manuscript culture, in which could be found considerable evidence of conflict and political opposition, long before the civil war broke out. 5 An interest in opposition sentiment led to questions not only about its articulation but also about its reception, about the transmission and reading of politics and news. In retrospect, matters of public opinion seem an integral component of the post-revisionist repudiation of revisionist localism.…”

“…© Blackwell Publishing 2004History Compass 2 (2004) BI 123,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Seventeenth-Century Print Culture 7…”

The Construction of Northumberland House and the Patronage of its Original Builder, Lord Henry Howard, 1603–14

“…20.Croft 1991, 63: Northampton usually described Salisbury as the ‘little lord’, or ‘little man’, which once became ‘the little one itself’ (TNA, SP14/71/16). Following Cecil’s death in 1612, he wrote to Viscount Rochester remarking that ‘so many rejoice, and so few seem to be sorry […] Is near his mistress [Elizabeth I], and wishes Rochester as near his, if any one can love so ugly and deformed a fellow’ ( Cal State P Dom 1611–18, 26 May 1612, 133).…”