The Religion of Robert Cecil

The debate over the nature and significance of religious change in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England has been one of the most lively of recent years and shows no sign of abating. The emergence or otherwise of a Calvinist consensus, the impact of the high church or Arminian party, the role of puritanism, and the relationship between all these and the outbreak of the civil war have generated vigorous discussion. Attention has inevitably tended to focus on the theological outlook of university-educated clerics, whose sermons and treatises provide a mine of information. In the absence of comparable sources it is far harder to evaluate the position of laymen, and in the case of Robert Cecil it may seem exceptionally foolhardy to attempt to do so, since he has usually been depicted as both an enigmatic figure and a morally dubious one. Hurstfield confined his discussion to the Cecils' view of the right relationship between church and state, concluding merely that Robert Cecil followed his father Lord Burghley in supporting a via media. Yet it is possible to piece together a large amount of information about his spiritual development, and the evidence suggests a gradual but very significant change of outlook, from orthodox Elizabethan protestantism to a more complex position in which both his doctrinal and aesthetic sensibilities were moving in the direction later identified with Laudianism. Moreover, in the construction of his private chapel at Hatfield, and in his links with men such as Richard Neile and Samuel Harsnett, he can be seen as the first great patron of the emerging high church party, antedating Buckingham and Charles I by a generation. Tracing the religious evolution of Robert Cecil first earl of Salisbury thus illuminates some of the crucial changes reshaping English protestantism in these formative years.