During the whole of the reign of Edward, Cecil had continued to enrich himself by grants, stewardships, reversions, and offices; not of course to the same extent as Somerset, Northumberland, Clinton, or Winchester, for he was a moderate man and loved safety, but on the accession of Mary he must have been very rich. During his mother’s life, which was a long one, he always looked upon Burghley House as hers, although he spent large sums of his own money upon buildings and improvements; but he inherited from his father large estates in Northamptonshire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and elsewhere. We have already noticed that he obtained the Crown manor of Wimbledon and other grants; but, in addition to those already noted, he obtained, in October 1551, the period of Somerset’s sacrifice, grants of the manor of Berchamstow and Deeping, in Lincolnshire; the manor and hall of Thetford, in the same county; the reversion of the manor of Wrangdike, Rutland; the manor of Liddington, Rutland, and a moiety of the rectory of Godstow. He was a large purchaser of land also in the county of Lincoln; so that although his household historian asserts that his lands never brought him in more than £4000 a year, his expenses were on a very lavish scale, and he had, as his friend the Duchess of Suffolk says in one of her letters to him, brought his wares to a good market. By his embroiderer’s account, already quoted, we see that at this period of his life he maintained thirty-six servitors wearing his badge and livery; but in the time of Elizabeth his establishments were on a truly princely footing. He had eighty servants wearing his livery, and we are told that the best gentlemen in England competed to enter his service; “I have nombered in his howse attending at table twenty gentlemen of his retayners of £1000 per annum a peece, in possession or reversion, and of his ordinarie men, as many more, some worth £1000, some worth 3, 5, 10, yea, £20,000, daily attending his service.”
But though acquisitive and fond of surrounding himself with the accessories of wealth and great standing, he had few of the tastes of the territorial aristocracy, whom he imitated. Arms, sport, athletic exercises, did not appeal to him. From his youth he dressed gravely and soberly; and at a time, subsequently, when splendour and extravagance in attire were the rule, he still kept to his fur-trimmed gown and staid raiment. He was an insatiable book buyer and collector of heraldic and genealogical manuscripts. Sir William Pickering in Paris, and Sir John Mason, had orders to buy for him all the attractive new books published in France; and Chamberlain in Brussels had a similar commission. The former mentions in one letter (15th Dec. 1551, State Papers, Foreign) having purchased Euclid with the figures, Machiavelli, Le Long, the New Testament in Greek, _L’Horloge des Princes_, _Discours de la Guerre_, Notes on Aristotle in Italian, and others; and the Hatfield Papers contain very numerous memoranda of books and genealogies bought by Cecil, or sent to him as presents from his friends and suitors. Wotton, for instance, when he was abroad and wished to oblige his friend, says: “If I knew anye kind of bookes heere (Poissy) which yow like, I wold bye them for yow, and bring them home with some of myne owne. Here is _Clemens Alexandrinus_ and _Theodoretus in Epistolas Pauli_, turned into Latin. But because I heere that yow have _Clemens Alexandrinus_ in Greek already, I suppose yow care not for him in Latin.”[63]