Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury was an English statesman and chief minister to James I.
Background
The third son of William Cecil, Baron Burghley Cecil, was born on 1 June in 1563 in London, United Kingdom. Robert was small and hunchbacked, in an age which attached much importance to physical beauty in both sexes, and he endured much ridicule as a result. Nonetheless, his father recognized that it was Robert rather than Thomas who had inherited his own political genius. While Burghley was fond of both his sons, he is said to have remarked that Robert could rule England, but Thomas could hardly rule a tennis court.
Education
Robert educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He also attended "disputations" at the Sorbonne.
Career
From 1584 to 1588 he was mainly employed abroad. In 1591 he was knighted and started doing the work of secretary of state, to which office he was finally appointed in 1596. In 1598 he went on a special mission to Henry IV of France, in connection with the termination of hostilities with Spain. On his father's death in the same year there was a bitter conflict between Cecil and the Earl of Essex for power. Because of his great administrative ability and political judgment, in this conflict the hunchbacked and crippled Cecil was victorious over Elizabeth's handsome but reckless favorite. It was largely Cecil's influence that secured a peaceful succession for James I, whose chief minister he then became. In 1604 he successfully carried through the negotiations that ended the war with Spain by the Treaty of London. In the same year he was made Viscount Cranborne and in 1605 Earl of Salisbury. In 1608 he became Lord Treasurer and applied his skill to the management of the king's tangled finances. Although desiring peace with Spain and France, and a balance between them, he aimed at making England the leading Protestant power. He died at Marlborough on May 24, 1612.
Achievements
Membership
Robert was a member of the House of Commons in all the Parliaments from 1584 to the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1603.
Personality
A careful, cautious, and orderly administrator, Cecil had the mind of a statesman, carried on his father's policy of the middle way, and was mainly responsible for the solution to the problem of uniting Britain under the Stuarts.
Connections
In 1589 Cecil married to Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, and his second wife, Frances Newton. Their son, William Cecil was born in Westminster on 28 March 1591 and baptized in St Clement Danes on 11 April. Elizabeth died when their son was six years old. They also had one daughter, Frances, who married Henry Clifford, 5th Earl of Cumberland.