Richard Cecil, MP

Richard Cecil

Family and Education b. c.1495, 1st s. of David Cecil by 1st w. m. c.1519, Jane (d. 10 Mar. 1587), da. of William Heckington of Bourne, Lincs., 1s. William 3da. suc. fa. by 1541.2

Offices Held

Page of the chamber by 1517, gent. by 1540; groom of the robes by 1528, yeoman by 1539; jt. (with fa.) keeper, Kings Cliffe park, Northants. 1517; bailiff, Bourne 1525, Whittlesea Mere, Cambs., Hunts., Lincs. and Northants. 1536; porter, Warwick castle 1548, keeper 1532; steward, Nassington, Upton and Yarwell, Northants. 1542; steward for Thomas, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, unknown property by 1548; sheriff, Rutland 1539-40; j.p. Northants. 1539-d., Lincs. (Holland, Kesteven and Lindsey) and Rutland 1547; commr. chantries, Northants., Oxon., Rutland and Oxford 1548, relief, Lincs. (Holland and Kesteven), Northants. and Rutland 1550, goods of churches and fraternities, Lincs. (Kesteven) and Northants. 1553.3 Biography Under his father’s will Richard Cecil received household furniture and an interest in some chantry land, but he had to await his stepmother’s death before entering upon his patrimony. His own acquisitions had begun with his leasing of property in Lincolnshire in 1519, about the time of his marriage, and continued with his purchase of the reversion of Little Burghley and neighbouring lands from Sir William Compton in 1527; but his real opportunity came with the Dissolution, which in five years yielded him in succession Stamford nunnery, priory and friary, to which in 1544 he added the manor of Essendine, Rutland. These transactions Cecil presumably financed out of the income from his posts in the Household and his other offices. In the first of these capacities he had accompanied Henry VIII to the Field of Cloth of Gold, and he was to receive 100 marks under the King’s will. Several of his local offices he shared with his father, whose place in the municipal life of Stamford, however, he did not succeed in filling. It is thus not surprising that he sat for the borough in only one Parliament, and then with a non-townsman in Kenelm Digby; as this was the Parliament which Cromwell promised the King to make ‘tractable’, Cecil’s election may imply government support, as his son’s was to do eight years later. To judge from an incident of 1535, when he went to the aid of a preacher under attack for expounding justification by faith, Cecil is likely to have seen eye to eye with Cromwell.4

Cecil died, apparently intestate, at his house in Cannon Row, Westminster, on 19 Mar. 1553 and was buried three days later at St. Margaret’s; a cenotaph was erected in St. Martin’s, Stamford.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558 Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard Notes 1. Stamford hall bk. 1461-1657, f. 129v. 2. Date of birth estimated from career. D. Powel, The historie of Cambria (1584), 142-7; Vis. Northants. ed. Metcalfe, 78-79; W. Harrod, Stamford, 271; PCC 3 Spert. 3. LP Hen. VIII, ii-v, x, xiv, xvi, xvii, xx; E163/12/17, nos. 38, 51, 54; NRA 5870, p. 729; CPR, 1547-8, pp. 78, 85-88, 1548-9, p. 137; 1550-3, p. 395; 1553, pp. 355-7, 414. 4. PCC 3 Spert; LP Hen. VIII, iii, v, ix, xii, xiii, xv, xvii-xix, xxi; NRA 6666 (Northants, RO, Exeter (Burghley) pprs. 47/9, 80/8, 89/1); DKR, ix. 190-1; C. Nevinson, Stamford, 72, 90; Strype, Eccles. Memorials, ii(1), 122-3; C. Read, Cecil, 19-21. 5. Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 32, 329; Harrod, 271; C142/98/50. '

Richard Cecil, Courtier, was born ? and d. 19 March 1552/53. He was a resident of Burleigh in the parish of Stamford Baron St Martin, Northamptonshire.

• In 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold

Parents: David Cecil (d. 1536) and Jane or Alice Dichons.

Married: Jane Heckington, daughter and heiress of William Heckington of Bourne, Lincolnshire.

Children:

1. Margaret Cecil
2. Elizabeth Cecil
3. Anne Cecil
4. William Cecil, 1st Baron of Burghley+1 b. 13 Sep 1521, d. 4 Aug 1598

Notes

Gentleman of the Privy Chamber; Sheriff of Rutland; Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1542 & 1543; Custodian of Windsor Castle; He supported the King (Henry VIII) in his breach with the Roman Catholic Church. It gave Richard a chance to buy confiscated Church lands; Jane brought the Lordship of Burghley as heir of father William Heckington of Bourne in the county of Lincoln.

Weblinks

• http://www.thepeerage.com/p6159.htm#i61586
• http://www.countyhistorian.com/cecilweb/index.php/Richard_Cecil

Biography

• Richard Cecil

Citations

  1. [S8] Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition, 2 volumes (Crans, Switzerland: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 1999), volume 1, page 162. Hereinafter cited as Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition.

  2. [S2] Peter W. Hammond, editor, The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda (Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1998), page 125. Hereinafter cited as The Complete Peerage, Volume XIV.

  3. [S37] Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 1363. Hereinafter cited as Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 107th edition.

  4. [S6] G.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, editors, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume II, page 428. Hereinafter cited as The Complete Peerage.

Further reading

• The Cecil Family, by George Ravenscroft Dennis. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1914.

'

Richard too was a courtier. In 1517 he was a royal page; in 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; he rose to be Groom of the Robes and constable of Warwick Castle. He was High Sheriff of Rutland in 1539, and was one of those who received no inconsiderable share of the plunder of the monasteries. He married Jane Heckington, daughter and heiress of William Heckington of Bourne, Lincolnshire. He had one son, William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520–1598), and three daughters.

When Richard died, he left an ample estate behind him in the counties of Rutland, Northamptonshire and elsewhere. He died at his house in Cannon Row and was buried at St Margaret's, Westminster.

Jane was a widow for 35 years dying 10 March 1587. Richard and Jane have a joint monument in St Martin's Church, Stamford.

He sent his son William to the grammar schools of Stamford and Grantham, and in 1535 William entered St. John's College, Cambridge. Academically a success, William ran foul of his father, when his heart was lost to Mary Cheke, daughter of a local widow, with only a fortune of 40 pounds to recommend her. William was immediately removed before he could take his degree, and was entered as a student at Gray's Inn in 1541. If the motive was to prevent a marriage, it failed. Two months after he came up to London, William married Mary, probably secretly. Thomas, the future Earl of Exeter and only fruit of this union was born at Cambridge on 5 May 1542, therefore presumably at his grandmother's house. The marriage was so distasteful to Richard, that he is said to have altered his will, or at any rate, to have intended to do so. But the young wife did not live long, dying on 22 February 1544.

Of his daughters, Anne (also called Agnes) married Thomas White of Tuxford, Notts.; Margaret married Roger Cave (see Cave-Browne-Cave baronets), nephew of Sir Ambrose Cave, and secondly Ambrose Smith; and Elizabeth married Robert Wingfield and secondly Hugh Allington.

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He appears in the Welsh genealogies: See Peter Bartrum, https://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/6315/CECIL_3... (March 1, 2017; Anne Brannen, curator)

Notes

http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-92-316.pdf

The draft and final versions of David Cecil’s will establish that he married secondly a wife named Jane or Joan [Roos?]. The provisions by which he bequeaths her the plate and household stuff which was hers before their marriage suggest that she was a widow when he married her, perhaps the widow of the Stamford glover and alderman, John Dyccons whose will David Cecil was charged with administering.

For the draft and final versions of David Cecil’s will, in which he mentions his wife, Jane or Joan, his two sons, Richard Cecil and David Cecil, and his daughter, Joan Cecil, see TNA PROB 11/29/71, and ‘Sir David Cecil’s Will’, supra.

In the two versions of his will, David Cecil leaves bequests to his unmarried daughter, Joan Cecil, and states that his current wife is her ‘natural mother’. He does not make the same statement with respect to either of his sons, Richard Cecil and David Cecil, and it seems likely they were his sons by his first wife, Agnes, and that therefore the testator’s grandmother was David Cecil’s first wife, Agnes.

Joan Cecil married Edmund Browne of Stamford. See the Browne pedigree in Corner, George R., ‘Robert Browne’, in Tymms, Samuel, ed., The East Anglian, Vol. I, (Lowestoft: Samuel Tymms, 1864), pp. 180-2 at: GoogleBooks

Through his aunt, Joan Cecil Browne, Lord Burghley was distantly related to the playwright, John Lyly

• Browne pedigree in Corner, George R., ‘Robert Browne’, in Tymms, Samuel, ed., The East Anglian, Vol. I, (Lowestoft: Samuel Tymms, 1864), pp. 180-2 GoogleBooks