Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/122

 98 THE CECILS

writes : " This county is in good order. I doubt not that soon eighteen out of every twenty recusants will come to the Church. In the worst parts of this shire I hear that five hundred have come in this three weeks, so that a notable papist complained that the common people are declining from them." Nevertheless he asks permission to come to town, assigning among other reasons that " his health requires him to take some physic this spring, and he dare not trust any ' potycarye ' in this town (York) being none but that are recusants." l

It was about this time that Lord Burghley built his house at Wothorpe, which, says Fuller, " must not be forgot, (the least of noble houses, and best of lodges) seeming but a dim reflection of Burghley, whence it is a mile distant. It was built by Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter, ' to retire to/ as he pleasantly said, ' out of the dust, whilst his great house at Burghley was a-sweeping.' " 2 This house must have been of considerable size, but it was dismantled at the end of the eighteenth century, and only ivy-covered ruins now remain.

In February, 1601, Lord Burghley took a prominent part in the suppression of the Essex Rebellion. He was " Colonel General of the foot " and, " with some ten horse went into London and proclaimed the Earl of Essex a traitor with all his adherents, by the mouth of the King-of-Arms, notwithstanding that my Lord of Essex with all his complices were in the

1 March ist, 1600 (Hatfield MSS., X. 48). 8 Fnller's Worthies, ed. 1840, II. 499.

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