Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/11

 PREFACE

THE house of Cecil rose into eminence in the middle of the sixteenth century, for the latter half of which Lord Burghley was the foremost states- man in England. His sons, Thomas, Earl of Exeter, and Robert, Earl of Salisbury, founded the two branches of the family which still have their seats at Burghley and Hatfield. After the death of Lord Salisbury in 1612, no Cecils with any great claims to distinction appeared in either branch until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the late Marquess of Salisbury, the " greater Cecil of a greater Queen," arose to prove that the spirit of his ancestor was only dormant.

Thus by far the greater part of this record is taken up with the life story of three great men Lord Burghley, Sir Robert Cecil, and the third Marquess of Salisbury. Of Burghley many lives have been written, and I cannot pretend to have discovered anything new about him. So far as I know, however, no separate biography of Sir Robert Cecil exists, and the chapters devoted to him, inadequate as they are, contain a good deal of material gathered together from various sources for the first time. Since this book is intended to be a history of the family, rather than of public events, I have endeavoured to lay special stress on the private life and character both of Burghley and his son.

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