2 - Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court

Summary

They that say in a rash and malicious mockry, that England is become a regnum Cecilianum may please their own cankered humour with such a device; but if my actions be considered, if there be any cause given by me of such a nickname, there may be found out in many other further causes to attribute other names then mine.

(Lord Burghley)

Sir John Neale argued, in his British Academy Raleigh Lecture in 1948, that public perception of a regnum Cecilianum, or kingdom of the Cecils, was common currency in the 1590s, invoking Spenser's lament that a once virtuous councillor had turned conservative and ambitious with age, seeking the advance of none but his own son, Sir Robert Cecil. Though initially cautious to affirm that such Cecilian influence and style, in reality, permeated the whole fabric of government, he presented the 1590s as a decade of constant disruptive factionalism headed by the earl of Essex and the Cecils. Arguing that Burghley's experience, subtlety and, most importantly, authority were ‘unrivalled’ he indicated that Spenser's criticism of Cecilian hegemony had some substance. It may have been the reckless, demanding and mercurial behaviour of Essex that drove the queen to back the Cecilian ‘faction’ to cut the political ground from under the earl's feet, but the cause was immaterial: it was a regnum Cecilianum nonetheless.

Neale, however, decontextualized regnum Cecilianum. Burghley's defence against political slander, to an unidentified recipient, was written not in the 1590s but on 14 August 1585.