Burghley’s Secret Press

“I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ and blank

 space for different names (sure, more!); and these are of the

 second edition.  He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares

 not what he puts into the press”.

Merry Wives of Windsor, II.i

Shakespeare had Burghley’s motto right in his spoof in the first quarto of Hamlet: “Double-hearted” to the core.

Before we leave behind the secret presses that Elizabeth’s governmental was trying to shut down in the 1590s, would it surprise you that William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer also supported a secret press?  Of course it wouldn’t, because you know enough about Burghley’s character from my prior posts to guess that he would do exactly that! 

Five miles from his father’s family home in Stamford, Lincolnshire (where his grandfather had kept an inn), Burghley, then known as untitled Master William Cecil, owned land in a tiny village called Barholm. There, in the early months of Catholic Queen Mary Tudor’s reign (1553), John Day, a committed Protestant, set up a press. Day had owned a profitable London print shop near St. Paul’s, turning out Protestant sermons, a bible and religious books with another printer named William Seres. Seres had been in Cecil’s employ. But because by 1553, England was ruled by a Catholic queen, and one soon to be married to that most Catholic of all monarchs, Philip II of Spain, Day had abandoned his London print shop and moved his press to Barholm on the land that Cecil owned.

Printers’ shops served dual purposes: the presses in the back produced the books sold in the front. This print shop, Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, still looks like it did in Shakespeare’s day.

Among the politically-charged pamphlets and books that Day published, one targeted the new queen, appearing hot off his press on the very day of her coronation. Day published another work that painted in heroic colors the last days and the death of Lady Jane Grey, the 9-day queen of England, whom Cecil had openly supported.  (Read more about Cecil and Lady Jane in my post, “The Traitor William Cecil”.) Day, or someone publishing through his press, worked under the pseudonym  “Michael Wood.”

Even after he successfully lied to the face of her most Catholic Majesty about his high treason to preserve his life, Cecil could not quite bring himself steadfastly to uphold Mary’s government.  And so, as Day and Seres, aided by William Cooke, Cecil’s 2nd wife Mildred’s brother, worked stealthily and sub rosa turning out treasonous pamphlets and books, Cecil and Mildred collected rent on the clandestine Barholm print shop in which the treason was produced, knowing full well what was going on there.

It all nearly came to a very bad end when Day was caught and sent to the Tower in 1554 for publishing “naughty books” (not what you think, but the description is fun!).  Luckily for Day, monarchs and religions changed frequently in England during this period. When Elizabeth I came to the throne, Day was released and restored his former profitable shop in London.  By 1580, Day had risen to become Master of the Stationers’ Company.

No Elizabethan kept more secrets under lock and key than Burghley.

And William Cecil?  Well, he continued throughout the rest of his life to write pamphlets under various pseudonyms supporting Elizabeth’s government’s position (and occasionally opposing it when she and he disagreed).

After all, just because a book, poem, play or pamphlet has an individual’s name printed on its title page in Elizabethan England, it doesn’t mean that the person actually wrote it.  One of the endlessly beautiful secrets about this period is how many names were “borrowed” for published works and how many “authors” never took a breath or held a pen because they never existed at all - a very handy characteristic when the censors came after a work.  The government could ban and burn copies of “naughty” works, but could never find or imprison an author who didn’t have a body!  

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