As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Historical person
1520–1598
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, was Elizabeth I’s principal secretary and later lord treasurer. He helped establish the Elizabethan religious settlement, managed diplomacy and finance and played a leading role in policy toward Mary, Queen of Scots. His long service made him one of the central architects of the regime’s stability and succession strategy.
Cecil is a major character in Ken Follett’s A Column of Fire, which uses his intelligence networks and Protestant statecraft within a wider European narrative. He also appears in Philippa Gregory’s The Virgin’s Lover and many other Elizabethan novels as the cautious, persistent minister behind the queen’s government.
Historical context
Series
The Bailiff Mountsorrel Tudor Mysteries follow county bailiff Edward Mountsorrel and town bailiff Francis Barton as they enforce the law in Nottinghamshire during the final years of Elizabeth I and the opening of James VI and I’s reign. Local murders and disappearances repeatedly lead into wider conflicts over…
All books in this series
The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…
All books in this series
Standalone books
