William Cecil's Survey of Stamford 1595: a town in turmoil By Alan Rogers Abramis, Bury St Edmunds 2020 - ISBN: 9781845497699- 144 pages Over the last decade Alan Rogers has published a series of volumes, sometimes under his own authorship but more often in collaboration, which have vastly illuminated our knowledge of late-medieval and early-modern Stamford. His latest publication focuses on the town’s experiences towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. The volume comprises four sections: an introduction, a transcript of the survey of Stamford Baron and Lordship of 1595, the Muster Roll of 1584 and substantial extracts and summaries of a range of documents relating to the town, mainly Acts of the Privy Council and extracts from the Cecil Papers. (The latter are held at Hatfield House, were published by the Historic Manuscripts Commission and are now available online) . Professor Rogers describes Stamford as a ‘town in turmoil’. There is no reason to doubt this description, the town suffering not only from the decline of its export markets but also from the atrophying of its religious institutions. What brought this to the persistent attention of national government was the fact that the lord of the manors of Stamford Baron and Town was William Cecil, Lord Burghley, long-serving chief minister and Lord Treasurer of Elizabeth I. Burghley seems to have been disinclined to intervene too directly in the affairs of the town, a reflection doubtless of the breadth of his more pressing national responsibilities and his own consciousness of increasing age and infirmity. As a result, he was prepared to delegate matters to his eldest son, Thomas Cecil. This was unfortunate as Thomas patently lacked the political and diplomatic skills exhibited by both his father and his half-brother Robert. Consequently, Thomas was dragged into a number of local conflicts, often incurring in the process the hostility of another aristocrat with local connections, Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby. Professor Rogers has detected three levels of conflict. At the top was the conflict between Thomas Cecil and Willoughby. (There is a wider context here which Professor Rogers does not explore: Willoughby’s links to the Earl of Essex.) There are hints in the accompanying sources that Burghley found his son’s attitude exasperating. At the middle level were conflicts involving local officials, one of whom, Richard Shute, was heavily involved in the administration of the Burghley estate, until he incurred the Lord Treasurer’s disfavour. By 1595 such conflicts had been evident for at least two generations. At the popular level, the conflicts were conducted with great acrimony and there were several instances of violence which came to the attention of the Privy Council. Professor Rogers is understandably cautious in specifying the causes of conflict. Religion does not appear to have been an issue and both Burghley and Willoughby played down any hints of personal animosity. Willoughby might have felt some resentment at losing some status in the locality, but by the late 1590s he was experiencing some financial difficulty and his Stamford interest was decidedly peripheral. Perhaps there was little more at stake than local pride and privilege, and that the only thing which differentiated Stamford from numerous other local conflicts was the Cecil interest. There is much of interest in the published sources, though they often seem incidental to the local conflicts which form the core of the volume. The survey does hint at decay of the town. There is much here that might stimulate further research by local historians. Professor Rogers himself thinks he is merely scratching the surface, but considers that much can be inferred from Cecil’s local relations about his personality and preferred ways of working. The local can thus illuminate the national picture. Mike Tillbrook In 1595, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord Treasurer of England, commissioned a survey of some of his manors, including Stamford Lordship (the town north of the river) and Stamford Baron (the town south of the river). This survey, from the estate papers of the FitzWilliam family of Milton, now in Northamptonshire Record Office, is transcribed in this book, together with some other records of the town from the reign of Elizabeth. But these papers are prefaced with an account of a series of ' troubles ' in Stamford in the reign of Elizabeth I: when the followers of Lord Willoughby and of Thomas Lord Cecil, older son of Sir William Cecil, fought in the streets; when two parties in the town council quarrelled and dismissed and disenfranchised the other party's followers from the council and the town; when appointments to the main offices such as Town Clerk and Recorder were passed from hand to hand at the whim of rival groups; when three successive serving Aldermen (mayors) of Stamford were imprisoned by the Privy Council for refusing to obey their commands; when one Alderman mobilised a large contingent of citizens to march on London to try to preserve what they saw as their charter rights and privileges; when William Cecil's son was accused of riotous behaviour and William Cecil's chief agent Richard Shute was accused of corruption by William Cecil himself. In short when Lord Burghley's authority in the town was challenged openly by nobles and lawyers. Yet through it all, William Cecil seems to have acted with moderation, keeping within the law and using the Privy Council rather than his diktat as lord of the manor and town of Stamford. This is a story which has never been told before and which has much to tell us about Stamford, about towns in the sixteenth century, and especially about William Cecil himself in the year of the five hundredth anniversary of his birth. Hilary Crowden