REREADING the thousands of words that Geoffrey Elton penned on English parliamentary history has been a fascinating and a humbling experience. The analytical power, the mastery of sources, the clarity of argument compel unstinting admiration. Although he generously acknowledged the contributions made by friends and students, he was the paramount revisionist of early modern parliamentary history.

On 29 April 1612 the London letter writer John Chamberlain penned another of his regular epistles to his friend Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador in Venice. For weeks a chief news item had been the declining health of the Lord Treasurer, Robert Cecil Earl of Salisbury. ‘I wish I could send you better assurance’ Chamberlain wrote, ‘but as far as I can learn there is more cause of fear than hope’. Salisbury was journeying to Bath, where he had often sought relief before, but he had been ‘very yll by the way yesterday and was almost gon once or twise’. His death was assumed to be imminent. ‘He is alredy much lamented and every man sayes what a misse there wold be of him and indeed [he] is much prayed for’. The news later in June was more of a surprise. Salisbury's passing, on the return journey from Bath, had been followed not by the expected tributes to his irreplaceability, but by a flood of ‘outragious speaches’.

The debate over the nature and significance of religious change in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England has been one of the most lively of recent years and shows no sign of abating. The emergence or otherwise of a Calvinist consensus, the impact of the high church or Arminian party, the role of puritanism, and the relationship between all these and the outbreak of the civil war have generated vigorous discussion. Attention has inevitably tended to focus on the theological outlook of university-educated clerics, whose sermons and treatises provide a mine of information. In the absence of comparable sources it is far harder to evaluate the position of laymen, and in the case of Robert Cecil it may seem exceptionally foolhardy to attempt to do so, since he has usually been depicted as both an enigmatic figure and a morally dubious one. Hurstfield confined his discussion to the Cecils' view of the right relationship between church and state, concluding merely that Robert Cecil followed his father Lord Burghley in supporting a via media. Yet it is possible to piece together a large amount of information about his spiritual development, and the evidence suggests a gradual but very significant change of outlook, from orthodox Elizabethan protestantism to a more complex position in which both his doctrinal and aesthetic sensibilities were moving in the direction later identified with Laudianism. Moreover, in the construction of his private chapel at Hatfield, and in his links with men such as Richard Neile and Samuel Harsnett, he can be seen as the first great patron of the emerging high church party, antedating Buckingham and Charles I by a generation. Tracing the religious evolution of Robert Cecil first earl of Salisbury thus illuminates some of the crucial changes reshaping English protestantism in these formative years.

It has been the standard wisdom of historians that whereas the rebel Dutch continued to trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions throughout the Armada war, the English did not. As the letter-writer John Chamberlain resentfully complained, ‘We for their sake and defence entering into the war, and being barred from all commerce and intercourse of merchandise, they in the meantime thrust us out of all traffic to our utter undoing’. The evidence assembled here suggests instead that English trafficking with the enemy was much greater than has been assumed, although it probably never reached the huge proportions of the Dutch effort. Moreover the substantial volume of illicit trade should point to a re-consideration of some important Elizabethan attitudes to Anglo-Spanish relations both before and during the war, and hence also more generally to religious attitudes.

On the afternoon of 7 July 1610, two petitions of grievance, one temporal and one spiritual, were presented to James I. According to the French ambassador, he received them with ‘un assez mauvais visage’ and uncharacteristically few words, although later the king permitted himself the tart comment that the petition of temporal grievances was long enough to be his chamber tapestry. Although James exaggerated its size, politically it was a weighty document, for among its complaints it set out the Commons' view that the new impositions, already bringing in around £70,000 per annum, were illegal. ‘With all humility’, they presented ‘this most just and necessary petition unto your Majesty, that all impositions set without assent of parliament may be quite abolished and taken away.’ To answer the grievance, on 10 July James turned to his lord treasurer, Robert Cecil earl of Salisbury, for a full statement. The speech which he then gave formed the basis for all future defences of the royal power to impose on trade made by crown spokesmen up to 1640. Salisbury described how, early in 1607, his friend and predecessor, Lord Treasurer Dorset, had proposed new impositions to help fill the empty royal coffers. The privy council, after discussion, decided instead to raise money on loan; but in October 1607 renewed rebellion in Ireland rendered the situation more urgent, and by spring 1608 it was apparent that loans could not meet the king's necessities.