Family life of powerful Tudor statesman revealed in Burghley Lecture
Visiting historian gives Burghley Lecture, named after William Cecil, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I
The caring role that Queen Elizabeth I’s most trusted adviser, Lord Burghley, had as a grandfather was the focus of a lecture given at St John’s College, where the young William Cecil arrived as a scholar 490 years ago.
The 2025 Lent Term Burghley Lecture, which was presented by historian Dr Susan M Cogan, of Utah State University, on Thursday 30 January in the Old Divinity School, can now be listened to online.
The Lord Burghley Visiting Fellowship and lecture are named after Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-1598), who was chief adviser to the Tudor queen for 40 years until his death, making him the most powerful man in England at the time.
Dr Cogan, who is Lord Burghley Visiting Fellow at St John’s in Lent Term 2025, gave the lecture titled Lord Burghley as a Grandfather: intergenerational relationships within the Cecil family.
In it she reveals Cecil’s love and compassion for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his efforts to ensure their wellbeing, and his grief after the deaths of his daughter Anne, Countess of Oxford, and wife Mildred Cecil, Lady Burghley.
Lord Burghley arrived at St John’s College in 1535 as a 14-year-old scholar and in 1559 he was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University. He never forgot his time at St John’s and the friends he made at the College, which he saw as a crucial and formative phase in his life.
Listen to the lecture:
The Lord Burghley Visiting Fellowship was launched in 2020 to mark the 500th anniversary of his birth, and to promote and support research into the lives and undertakings of Cecil and his highly accomplished wife, and the worlds in which they lived.
Dr Cogan is Associate Professor of History, and Director of the Undergraduate Teaching Fellows and the Medieval and Early Modern Studies programmes at at Utah State University. Her research examines the social history of the English Reformations, political and cultural implications of early modern architecture and gardens, gender, and kinship. Her current book project is an analysis of intergenerational relationships between grandparents and grandchildren.
Published 13/2/2025