Page:A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time.djvu/49

 of Sir Thomas Cecil, 13 years later, seems also to have been in some way irregular, since it needed the royal "pardon."

There is nothing to show who this Philip Tylney was, who acted on this occasion as vendor, but Sir Thomas Cecil was the son of the great Lord Treasurer Burghley, who was Secretary of State under Edward VI., and for 40 years guided the Councils of Queen Elizabeth. Sir Thomas himself was a high official under Elizabeth and King James I.; he was knighted in 1575, received the Order of the Garter in 16ot; under James I. he was made Privy Councillor, and having succeeded his father as Baron Burghley, was created by James Earl of Exeter. His brother Sir Robert also held high office and was made in 1603 Baron Cecil, in 1604 Viscount Cranbourne, in 1605 Earl of Salisbury. Thomas Cecil died Feb. 7, 1622, aged 80, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He married 1st Dorothy, daughter of John Nevil, Lord Latimer, and 2nd, Frances, daughter of Lord Chandos. He was, doubtless, a man of large ideas and great ambition, his royal mistress was herself Lady of the manor of Horncastle, and Horncastle having thus been brought under his notice, he may have been too grasping in compassing his purposes. The Revesby Charters show that he purchased that estate in 1575.

We may add that the Cecils were descended from an ancient family located in Wales soon after the Norman Conquest, and acquired large possessions in the reign of King Rufus; the 14th in descent was David Cecil of Stamford, Sergeant at Arms to King Henry VIII., he was grandfather to the 1st Lord Burghley. The present representatives of this old family are the Marquis of Exeter of Burghley House, Stamford, and the Marquis of Salisbury of Hatfield House, Herts.

We have now reached the end of a somewhat lengthy series of owners formerly connected with Horncastle, its manor, and its soke, bringing us down to the early part of the 17th century, and we think that few towns, of its size, could show such a record of distinguished names. The information available as to more recent periods is more meagre. The Bishops of Carlisle continued to hold the manor down to the year 1856, and various parties held leases of it under them, they themselves residing here from time to time, until the episcopal palace was demolished in 1770, when the present Manor House was erected on its site.

We have already stated that Queen Elizabeth leased the manor from the Bishop of Carlisle of that date, she was succeeded in the lease by King James I., who transferred it to Sir Henry Clinton, but owing to a legal error in that transaction, it proved void. One of the said Bishops in the next reign was Dr. Robert Snowden, whose family were located in this neighbourhood, his son being Vicar of Horncastle. Abigail Snowden married Edward, son of Sir Edward Dymoke, Knt., in 1654, and Jane Snowden married Charles Dymoke, Esq., of Scrivelsby Court; the former belonged to the, so called, Tetford branch of the Dymokes, who have of late years also succeeded to the Scrivelsby property. Bishop Robert Snowden granted a lease of the Horncastle manor to his kinsman, Rutland Snowden, and his assignees for three lives; but this