1996/12/01 by Felicity Heal
Arts and Humanities · #Appeal #Classics #Context (archaeology) #Gentry #History #Honor #Honour #Law #Philosophy #Political science #Possession (linguistics) #Pride #Religious studies #Reputation #Scottish History and National Identity #Sociology
paper · doi:10.2307/3679234
openalex publication_date 1996/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
In 1576 William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was engaged in one of the most painful disputes of his distinguished career: a bitter conflict with the earl of Oxford who had married, and then repudiated, his beloved daughter Anne. Cecil's distress erupted in a series of memoranda enumerating die injuries inflicted by die earl. At the end of the most comprehensive of these documents he briefly resumed his other role, as mentor and Polonius to the young de Vere. Remember, he begged him, who he was and what the world expected of him: above all remember that ‘the gretest possession that any man can have is honor, good name, good will of many and of the best sort’. This appeal to honour as good reputation among the wisest and best was unlikely to move his renegade son-in-law, whose understanding of the honour code, if we may judge by his actions, is that it provided justification for the wilful individualism of the nobleman. But Cecil's choice of language has resonance in the broader context of thinking about reputation in the late sixteenth century. It eschews excessive personal pride in favour of a balanced appeal to the judgment of one's peers, yet it is scarcely an elevated perception of virtuous Protestant honour of the kind associated with another of Cecil's protègès, Philip Sidney.