THE CECILS
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDING OF THE FAMILY
The authentic history of the house of Cecil may be said to begin with David Cyssell, or Syssell, of Stamford, the grandfather of Lord Burghley. Unfortunately Burghley delighted in heraldry and genealogy, a dangerous hobby in those days, when even the kings-of-arms were not above manufacturing a long pedigree for a man of wealth and position. Numerous scraps of pedigrees and genealogical notes in Burghley's handwriting exist at Hatfield, which, if they prove nothing else, show at least that the pedigree which was finally accepted was the outcome of a dozen other versions which did not work out satisfactorily.
"The collections made for him," says Mr. Oswald Barron, "are suspect in their origin and untrustworthy in detail, and it might have been better for the modern genealogist had Burghley been careless of his source, for we have on this side the suspicion of documents tampered with, and on the other
