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Location, Location, Location! Cecil House in the Strand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Jill Husselby  and
Paula Henderson
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Extract

In 1560 Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's Principal Secretary and Privy Councillor (Fig. 1), transferred his London residence from Cannon's Row at the hub of the court at Whitehall to the golden three-quarter mile of the Strand. Straight away he named the property ‘Cecil House’ and it became his principal household residence during the law terms, the most active periods of government business. There was no more prestigious location and the house was to remain his London headquarters throughout his career until he died there in 1598.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 45 , 2002 , pp. 159 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2002

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References

Notes

1 Throughout this article, we will refer to William Cecil's London house as the ‘Strand house’ and the plan as the ‘Strand plan’. Lord Burghley's surviving country house in Northamptonshire will be referred to as ‘Burghley House’.

2 Cecil's complaints of the expense of keeping his London household in term time (PRO, SP 12/181/42) are quoted in Read, C., Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London, 1960), p. 321 Google Scholar. See also, Peck, F., Desiderata Curiosa, ed. Evans, T., 2 vols (London, 1732–35), I, p. 23.Google Scholar

3 On the great houses in the Strand, see SirGater, George and Godfrey, W. H. (eds), Survey of London: the Strand (The parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, part 2), XVIII (London, 1937)Google Scholar; on Durham House, ibid., p. 89. Hereafter, Survey of London.

4 Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford, 1961 Google Scholar; reprint with corrections of 1923 first edition), IV, Appendix A.

5 Murdin, W. and Hayes, S. (eds), A Collection of State Papers Transcribed from original letters and other authentick memorials … left by William Cecil Lord Burghley (London, 1740–59), p. 752.Google Scholar

6 Calendar of State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, IV (1561–62), p. 187, n. 8 (summary)Google Scholar. Hereafter, Cal. S.P. for various volumes of the series.

7 For a good survey of Cecil's involvement with all of these institutions, see Graves, M., Burghley: William Cecil Lord Burghley, Profiles in Power, gen. ed. Robins, K. (London, 1998).Google Scholar

8 Read, C., Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London, 1955), p. 209 Google Scholar, quoting, Cal. S.P. Spanish 1558–67, pp. 199–200.

9 Survey of London, p. 125. See also, Stow, John, A Survey of London written in the Year 1598 (facsimile of the revised edition of 1603, ed. Morley, Henry [Stroud, 1997), p. 404 Google Scholar. Hereafter, Stow.

10 Exeter Archives, EX/5/17. The Exeter Archives are at Burghley House, Northamptonshire. All further references will simply be EX, plus the manuscript number.

11 EX/5/18.

12 EX/49/7. There are many deeds: see, for example, EX/5/21 and EX/5/25–31.

13 Stow, p. 404.

14 Survey of London gives a diagrammatic illustration of these, p. 125. EX/25/1 details the extent of Lord Burghley's estates in c. 1598, including these properties.

15 The house would also appear prominently on the skyline of Visscher's panorama of 1616, but Visscher never visited London, so his view is suspect. The Cecil property is also shown in Faithorne and Newcourt's map of 1658, but very little is learned from this view.

16 On early mapping/surveying conventions and uses of the scale bar, see Skelton, R. A., Decorated Printed Maps of the 15th to 18th Centuries (London, 1965), pp. 52–54 Google Scholar; also, Harvey, P. D. A., ‘Estate Surveyors and the Spread of the Scale-map in England, 1550–80’, Landscape History (Journal of the Society for Landscape Studies), xv (1993), pp. 37–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Robert Smythson's plans of Somerset House and Northampton House (Royal Institute of British Architects) are the only other Strand houses to be recorded in such detail. See Girouard, M., ‘The Smythson Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects’, Architectural History, 5 (1962), I/12 (Northampton House) and I/13 (Somerset House), pp. 32–33, 74–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Executed in 1609, the plans show much later gardens, including the alterations to Somerset House being carried out by Queen Anne of Denmark at that time. Nothing is known about the gardens at Somerset House in the sixteenth century. In Norden's map, only scattered trees are shown (Fig. 2).

18 A copy of Lord Burghley's will is at the Northamptonshire Records Office (NRO, Misc. Photostats 690); it is also printed in Collins, Life of William Cecil… Lord Burghley (London, 1732), pp. 80–94, p. 93.Google Scholar

19 EX/5/21.

20 EX/5/21.

21 Measuring the plan is difficult because the paper is not absolutely flat and, for reasons of conservation, cannot be pressed.

22 EX/31.

23 EX/33.

24 EX/35. Cecil was also fined in 1564 for encroachment ‘upon the highway …’. HMC Salisbury MS XIII, series 9 (30 November 1564).

25 Airs, M., The Making of the English Country House (London, 1975), p. 2 Google Scholar, summarizing Cal. S.P. Scotland, no. 819 (17 June 1560), p. 426.Google Scholar

26 See Cecil's correspondence with Nicholas Bacon and Marquis of Winchester mentioned here. There is also correspondence concerning buildings with Bess of Hardwick, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Christopher Hatton and the Earl of Leicester, all of whom built or developed great houses.

27 Gotch, A. J., ‘The Homes of the Cecils’, in William Cecil, Lord Burghley, ed. Barnard, F. P, Historic Monographs I (London, 1904), p. 55.Google Scholar

28 In the ‘Green Gallery’ described by Waldstein in 1600, for example. Waldstein, Baron, The Diary of Baron Waldstein: A Traveller in Elizabethan England, trans, and annotated by Groos, G. W. (London, 1981), fol. 149, p. 87 Google Scholar. The scheme devised for the gallery in Cecil's hand (dated 1588) is in BL, Lansdowne MSS, vol. CIV, fol. 24.

29 Thurley, S., Royal Palaces of Tudor England (New Haven & London, 1993), p. 217 Google Scholar, and Waldstein, op. cit., fol. 137, p. 47.

30 John Dee, The Elements of Geometric (1570), preface. Quoted in Skelton, R. A. and Summerson, J., A Description of the Maps and Architectural Drawings in the Collection Made by William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, now at Hatfield House (Oxford, 1971), p. 3.Google Scholar

31 M. Girouard, in a paper given at a conference on ‘Architectural Draughtsmanship’ at the University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education in May 2001, and by personal communication.

32 Colvin, Howard (ed.), The History of the King's Works, III, 1485–1600 (pt 1), (London, 1975), p. 3. Hereafter King's Works.Google Scholar

33 Hatfield, CPM I.18 and CPM II.22, respectively. These are reproduced in Skelton and Summerson, Description of Maps, pp. 146 and 171. Neither of these drawings is signed; the attributions are made on the grounds of payment to Bradshaw in 1543–44 (King's Works, III, p. 55).

34 Henderson, P. and Husselby, J., ‘England's Earliest Garden Plan?’, Country Life, CXCIV (23 March 2000), pp. 144–45Google Scholar; the plan and details are published in colour. On Hawthorne, see King's Works, III, p. 326.

35 Published in Summerson, J., ‘The Building of Theobalds’, Archaeologia, XCVII (1959), pp. 107–26, pl. XXX.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 King's Works, III, p. 326.

37 See Husselby, J., ‘Architecture at Burghley House; The Patronage of William Cecil 1553–1598’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 3 vols, 1996, II, p. 279.Google Scholar

38 On these and similar plans, see Henderson, P., ‘The Visual Setting of the English Country House: 1500–1625’, Architecture, Jardin, Paysage (Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 1 au 4 juin 1992), ed. Guillaume, Jean (Picard, 1999), pp. 207–18Google Scholar. When that article was written, the author suggested that Lord Burghley himself had drawn the plans, but this is clearly not the case.

39 King's Works, IV, p. 157.

40 See Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, 1, pp. 82–85 Google Scholar. For Cecil's remarks on or about plans see PRO, SP 12/20/19 and Hatfield, CP 143/41.

41 Memorial to the masons 1558, Hatfield, CP 214/103.

42 PRO, SP Dom 12/27/54.

43 We know from documents concerning Burghley House that Cecil was already displaying knowledge of French classical architecture at this time and that friends in France were supplying him with up-to-date books on the subject. See Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, pp. 36, 87–89.Google Scholar

44 Cerceau, Androuet du, De Architectura (Paris, 1559).Google Scholar

45 BL, Harleian MS 570 I, fol. 39r. This manuscript is obviously a ‘first draft’ and most of the description of William Cecil's house is crossed out, making the final entry (when it was published) about the same length as for the other Strand houses.

46 Thomas Palmer's Probate Inventory sheds no light on this. PRO, LR 2/119.

47 Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, II, pp. 248–49 and 252–53.Google Scholar

48 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, p. 88.Google Scholar

49 EX/5/21 (cited above).

50 See Smuts, R. M., ‘The Court and Its Neighbourhood: Royal Policy and Urban Growth in the Early Stuart West End’, Journal of British Studies, xxx, no. 2 (April 1991), pp. 117–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Hatfield, CP 153/45.

52 Henderson, P., ‘A Shared Passion: the Cecils and their Gardens’, Patronage, Culture and Power: the early Cecils, 1558–1612, ed. Croft, Pauline (New Haven and London, 2002), pp. 99–120, especially pp. 99–104.Google Scholar

53 PRO, SP12/23/19. See also, Husselby, J., ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, pp. 182–83.Google Scholar

54 Henderson, P., ‘The Loggia in Tudor and Early Stuart England: The Adaptation and Function of Classical Form’, Albion's Classicism, ed. Gent, Lucy, Studies in British Art 11 (London and New Haven, 1995), pp.109–45.Google Scholar

55 On the origins of the garden façade, see Henderson, P., ‘Escape from Formality in the sixteenth Century English Country House’, Architecture et vie sociale: l' organisation intérieure des grandes demeures a la fin du Moyen Age et a la Renaissance (Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 6 au 10 juin 1988), ed. Guillaume, Jean (Paris, 1994), pp. 269–77.Google Scholar

56 Hatfield, CPM 143/41.

57 PRO, SP 12/23/10 and 12/23/19. On the building at Burghley, see Husselby, J., ‘The Politics of Pleasure: William Cecil and Burghley House’, in Patronage, Culture and Power, p. 27.Google Scholar

58 Stow, p. 404.

59 Burgon, J., The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2 vols (London, 1839), I, p. 394 Google Scholar. John Mounte's bill, PRO, SP 12/20/43.

60 Cal. S.P. Foreign, 28 January 1562/3, no. 182, p. 82 (summarized in Burgon, Life and Times, II, p.408).

61 Peck, , Desiderata Curiosa, I, p. 50.Google Scholar

62 Reproduced in colour in Patronage, Culture and Power, pl. XI.

63 For contemporary urban planting schemes, see Schofield, J., ‘City of London Gardens, 1500–c. 1620, Garden History, xxvii, no. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 78, 80 and 86.Google Scholar

64 On the quincunx as the chosen planting form for orchards in the Renaissance, see Lazzaro, Claudia, The Italian Renaissance Garden: from the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy (New Haven and London, 1990), p. 44.Google Scholar

65 Illustrated in Strong, Roy, The Renaissance Garden in England (London, 1979), p. 27.Google Scholar

66 Bacon would add a mount to the gardens at Gray's Inn in 1608, see Jacques, D., ‘“The Chief Ornament” of Gray's Inn: the Walks from Bacon to Brown’, Garden History, XVII, no. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

67 Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (London, 1961), IV, Appendix AGoogle Scholar. Essex was Captain of the Queen's Horse at the time.

68 Hentzner, Paul, A Journey into England in the year 1598, ed. Walpole, Horace (Strawberry Hill, 1757), p. 54.Google Scholar

69 EX/5/21.

70 Henderson, P., ‘The Architecture of the Tudor Garden’, Garden History, XXVII, no. 1 (June 1999), pp. 54–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 See ‘Warrant to suffer the Erie of Exeter to sett Rayles before his square Tower in Covent Garden’, signed by the Earl of Bedford on 26 June 1607. Alnwick Castle, MSS Syon Y III, 2, Box 4, Envelope 10. We are grateful to Dianne Duggan for bringing this document to our attention.

72 HMC Salisbury MSS Series 9, XIII, p. 66.

73 A lane ran parallel to the Strand, between Drury Lane and St Martin's in the Fields, visible in the Survey of London, XVIII, p. 124.

74 See John Thorpe's survey in Patronage, Culture and Power, pl. XI.

75 See references in Henderson, P., ‘Maps of Cranborne Manor in the Seventeenth Century’, Architectural History, 44 (2001), pp. 358–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Hentzner, , Journey into England, pp. 54–55 Google Scholar. See also, Henderson, P., ‘Gardens of the Cecils’, pp. 99–104.Google Scholar

77 King's Works, I, p. 551.

78 PRO, SP 12/19.

79 Cal. S.P. Foreign 1561–62, p. 125.

80 Camden, William, Britannia, a facsimile of the 1695 edition published by Gibson, E. (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 296.Google Scholar

81 Morgan, R., Tennis: The Development of the European Ball Game (Oxford, 1995), p. 123Google Scholar. We are grateful to Dr Morgan for his assistance in our research on early tennis courts.

82 Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, pp. 161–65.Google Scholar

83 Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, p. 33 Google Scholar; those who became members of his household included the Earls of Oxford, Rutland, Southampton, Essex and Lord de Zouche.

84 Quoted in Thurley, S., Royal Palaces, p. 183 and n. 37.Google Scholar

85 Quoted in Marshall, J., The Annals of Tennis (London, 1878), p. 68.Google Scholar

86 Morgan, , Tennis, pp. 118–22.Google Scholar

87 In July 1562, Richard Hodsham wrote to Cecil from Newcastle concerning four hundred paving stones to be shipped to Cecil and delivered to London which could possibly have been the flooring for the tennis court (PRO, SP 15/23/51).

88 West Sussex Record Office, MF 1276 PHA 1630. The court is of the ‘jeu carre’ type, which was simpler than the ‘jeu dedans’ game on which the modern game of Real Tennis is based. See Morgan, , Tennis, p. 77.Google Scholar

89 King's Works, in, p. 326.

90 Due to the great number of courts in existence in 1592, it was actually proposed that keeping tennis courts and bowling alleys for hire in Westminster should be restricted to one licensee in order to curb ‘deceitful playing’ and other abuses. Marshall, , Annals of Tennis, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

91 There was a bowling alley at Theobalds and Cecil enjoyed the game himself. See Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, p. 200, n. 248.Google Scholar

92 Boorde, Andrew, Compendyous Regyment or Dyetary of Health (1542 and 1547), ed. Furnivall, F. J., 1870, p. 239.Google Scholar

93 Thurley, , Tudor Palaces, p. 189.Google Scholar

94 Marshall, , Annals of Tennis, p. 73.Google Scholar

95 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act I, 281–82.

96 PRO, SP 12/20/20.

97 Peck, 1, pp. 25–26. In 1586 Cecil claimed there were rarely fewer than one hundred in his household, but this would have included staff remaining at Theobalds during term time. Read, , Lord Burghley, p. 321.Google Scholar

98 Read, , Lord Burghley, p. 320.Google Scholar

99 Barnett, R., Place, Profit, and Power, The James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science, LI (Chapel Hill, 1969), pp. 9–11 Google Scholar. See also, Thomas Billot's account book 1573–77, cited in Read, C., ‘Lord Burghley's Household Accounts’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, IX (1956), pp. 343–48, esp. p. 346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 Barnett, , Place, Profit and Power, pp. 7–11.Google Scholar

101 Summerson, , ‘The Building of Theobalds’, pl. XXXIII.Google Scholar

102 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, pp. 80–94.Google Scholar

103 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, p. 91.Google Scholar

104 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, p. 93.Google Scholar

105 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, pp. 88 and 93.Google Scholar

106 Peck, , Desiderata, I, p. 16.Google Scholar

107 Greg, W., ‘Books and Bookmen in the Correspondence of Archbishop Parker’, The Library, 4th series, XVI, no. 3 (December 1935), pp. 243–79, p. 274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

108 Hessels, J. (ed.), Ecclesiae Londino Batavae Archivum, 2 vols (London 1887), I, no. 72.Google Scholar

109 Cecil's will printed in Collins, , Life of William Cecil, p. 92.Google Scholar

110 Husselby, , ‘Architecture at Burghley House’, I, p. 134.Google Scholar

111 On the importance of Mildred Cecil, see Croft, Pauline, ‘Mildred, Lady Burghley: The Matriarch’, in Patronage, Culture and Power, pp. 283–300.Google Scholar

112 Schofield, J., Medieval London Houses (New Haven & London, 1994), p. 67 Google Scholar. Schofield writes that it was unusual for parlours to have exterior doors.

113 Peck, 1, p. 24.

114 Girouard, M., ‘Elizabethan Architecture in the Gothic Tradition’, Architectural History, VI (1963), p. 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 Peck, , Desiderata, p. 19.Google Scholar

116 Collins, , Life of William Cecil, p. 93.Google Scholar

117 See S. Thurley, Royal Palaces, chapters 7 and 8. For a good account of Cecil's patronage, see Graves, M., Burghley: William Cecil Lord Burghley, Profiles in Power series, gen. ed. Robbins, K. (London, 1998), pp. 114–30.Google Scholar

118 Not unusual in medieval houses. See Schofield, J., Medieval Houses, p. 82.Google Scholar

119 After Cecil's visit to Holdenby in 1579, he wrote to Hatton that he found ‘no one thing of greater grace than your stately ascent from your hall to your great chamber’. Nicholas, N., Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton (London, 1847), p. 224.Google Scholar

120 See Husselby, , Architecture at Burghley House’, II, p. 286 (these stairs were replaced in the eighteenth century)Google Scholar.

121 See Girouard, M., ‘Burghley House, Lincolnshire: pt. 2’, Country Life, CXLXXXVI (30 April 1992), p. 59.Google Scholar

122 The stairs are illustrated in Summerson, “The Building of Theobalds’, pl. XXXI.

123 Simon Thurley, Andor Gomme and Nicholas Cooper were all helpful in discussions about the possible locations of the great hall.

124 BL, Lansdowne MSS, XXXIII, fol. 70.

125 BL, Lansdowne MSS, XXXIII, fol. 70.

126 See S.P. Dom 12/20/8 and 12/20/19. In Cecil's memorial of tasks to be done at Burghley, ‘to send to Gry-sthorp for ye hangings’ is at the end of the list (Cat. S.P. Dom 28 March 1561), and on 3 November 1561 Kemp reported to Cecil that the hangings would be sent to London as soon as possible (although he does not specifically mention these are from Grimsthorpe), PRO, SP 12/20/19.

127 van Dorsten, J., ‘Literary Patronage in Elizabethan England: the Early Phase’, in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Fitch Lyle, G. and Orgel, S. (Princeton, 1981), pp. 198–99.Google Scholar

128 The queen stayed with Cecil, 30 January to 1 February 1595 (new calendar), following the Derby marriage. She also visited in 1593, 1596 and 1598. See Kitto, J. V., The Accounts of the Church wardens of St Martin's in the Fields 1525–1603 (London, 1901), pp. 471, 451, 483 and 515Google Scholar. See also Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, iv, Appendix A and Cal. S.P. Addenda 1580–1625, XXX and in XXXVI, ‘a charge which her Mj gave me in your presence when she sat in the council at the Ld Treasurer's house near the Savoy’ (letter from the Earl of Huntingdon to the Privy Council). The latter is important because the queen rarely sat in the Privy Council.

129 BL, Lansdowne MSS, vol. XXIII, fols 70, 71; extracts cited in Barnett, Place, Profit, and Power, pp. 7–9.

130 Barnett, R., Place, Profit, and Power, p. 8 Google Scholar. For the banqueting house, see Chambers, I, p. 16, n. 2 (BL, Harleian MSS 293, fol. 217).

131 When Winchester wrote to Cecil about the Strand house in 1560 (see above), he also mentioned ‘your chimney in the court it shall be amended’ and no other chimney is shown in either courtyard.

132 BL, Harleian MS 5701, fol. 39r.

133 Not without consequence, as it was illegal to celebrate the ‘superstitious time of the Nativity’ in the Commonwealth period. See his account, quoted in Peter Cunningham, A Hand-Book of London (1850, new enlarged and corrected edition), pp. 298–99.

134 Evelyn, John, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, E. S. (Oxford, 1955), III, p. 95 Google Scholar. The location of William Cecil's chapel is unknown, although his ‘oratory’ at the end of his Great Chamber was noted by Norden. See above. We are grateful to Annabel Ricketts for discussions on the whereabouts of William Cecil's chapel in the Strand house. In the end, we have not been able to draw any conclusions.

135 Preserved at Burghley House, EX13/1.

136 King's Works, IV, p. 264.