should be added, to his honour, that he kept up the friendliest intercourse with his wife's family, and when his mother-in-law died in 1548, she bequeathed all her ‘wine potts,’ with her ‘second feather bed,’ to her eldest daughter, but her ‘new bed, with the bolsters and hangings,’ she bequeathed to her grandson, ‘Thomas Sysell,’ to be kept by her executors in trust ‘untill the said Thomas shall come to school to Cambridge.’
As Cecil had been a diligent student at the university, so he continued to apply himself to the study of law at Gray's Inn. His father's position at court soon brought him under the notice of the king, but there is no indication that at this period he looked for advancement to royal favour only; the presumption, rather, is that his ambition pointed to a brilliant career at the bar. In 1547 he became custos brevium in the court of common pleas, a valuable office, the reversion to which he had secured by grant some years before.
He did not long remain a widower. As his first wife was the sister of the greatest English scholar of his time, so his second was the daughter of a man hardly less eminent for his profound learning. This was Mildred, eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall, Essex, to whom he was married on 21 Dec. 1545. Sir Anthony was preceptor, or governor, to Edward VI. Cheke was the king's tutor, to which office he was appointed in July 1544. Roger Ascham pronounced Lady Mildred and Lady Jane Grey the two most learned women in England; but Sir Anthony's second daughter, Ann, became eventually even more celebrated than her sister, and, by her marriage with Sir Nicholas Bacon, was the mother of the illustrious Sir Francis. With the accession of Edward VI a new direction was given to Cecil's ambition. The lord protector Somerset took him by the hand and made him his master of requests. When the war with Scotland broke out, Cecil accompanied his patron to the north, and was present at the battle of Pinkey, where he narrowly escaped being slain (11 Sept. 1547). He had scarcely returned to England when he was chosen to sit for Stamford in the parliament that met on 8 Nov. 1547. In the following September he became the protector's secretary, and when Somerset fell his secretary was committed to the Tower. There he remained for two months, and was liberated on 25 Jan. 1550, only after giving a bond for a thousand marks to appear before the council when he should be called. By this time, however, it had become evident that his extraordinary ability could not be dispensed with by the party in power, and the eyes of all the chief personages in the state were turned upon him. On 5 Sept. 1550 he was appointed one of the secretaries of state, and sworn of the privy council, and from this time till his death he continued to occupy a position in the affairs of the nation such as no other man in Europe below the rank of a sovereign attained to, his transcendent genius and wonderful capacity for public business making him for forty-eight years an absolutely necessary minister to the three children of Henry VIII, whom he served so effectively, and, it must be added, so loyally. His earliest preferments indicate that he had already won some reputation as a lawyer. In January 1551 he was one of a commission with Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Ridley and Goodrich, and others, for trying certain Anabaptists (Fœdera, xv. 250). Shortly after this he appears as recorder of Boston, and in April 1552 he was appointed chancellor of the order of the Garter.
In October 1551 he received the honour of knighthood, together with his brother-in-law, Sir John Cheke. In May 1552 his father died, leaving him large estates in Rutlandshire, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire. He was now a rich man, and began to live in a manner befitting his ample means. His ambition began to widen its horizon, but it never betrayed him into treasonable intrigues or tempted him to forget that the highest honours he could hope for were to be won only by faithful service to the crown. When the insane scheme of the Duke of Northumberland for altering the succession and setting Lady Jane Grey upon the throne was forced upon the judges and nobility in June 1553, Cecil added his signature to the document under protest, declaring that he signed it as a witness only (Froude, v. 509). He had already expressed himself very strongly against the measure, and actually resigned his post as secretary of state when it was persisted in (Tytler). When Queen Mary succeeded to the throne by the death of her brother on 6 July, Cecil was out of office, and the queen did not reinstate him; she was already under the influence of very different advisers. During the first year of Mary's reign he seems to have lived in retirement, if that might be called retirement when he was attracting attention by the great expense of his establishment and the large sums he was spending upon his houses at Wimbledon and Burleigh (Salisbury MSS.; Calendar, p. 127). He was watching for his opportunity and biding his time.
Meanwhile, on 23 July 1554, Mary became
