The Cecil name is firmly tied to the political history of early modern England. As sequential advisers to Elizabeth I and Lord Treasurers under Elizabeth and James I, respectively, William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and his son, Robert (First Earl Salisbury), have been defined by their governmental policies and decision-making. Seldom have we heard about Cecilian activity that transcended the boundaries of Crown politics. Little has been said of William and Robert’s shared proclivities for building or their mutual passion for gardens, Burghley’s advocacy of economic innovation, or Salisbury’s cultivation of new musical techniques. By focusing strictly on the political lives of these influential figures, scholarship not only has denied William and Robert depth of interest, but also has marginalized, if not ignored, the significance of activities pursued by other members of the Cecil family. Who ever heard of the architectural undertakings of Thomas, Burghley’s elder son, for instance, or the humanistic projects of William’s wife, Mildred? Until now, that is.

Patronage, Culture, and Power: The Early Cecils, 1558–1612, a plentifully illustrated compilation of fourteen essays edited by Pauline Croft, introduces us anew to the Cecils, attempting to flesh out a “three-dimensional portrait” of the family by examining the patronage practices of its members in four areas: building, the arts, economics, and the intellectual sphere of the household. Drawing upon new evidence from diverse sources and looking in fresh ways at known material, the essays in Patronage, Culture, and Power demonstrate both the Cecils’ wide-ranging interests and their active patronage. Individual essays rely on musical instruments, entertainment bills, and building schedules alongside more traditional documents such as ground plans, letters, and literary works in order to project an image of a family that not only was engaged informally and recreationally in aesthetic and intellectual pursuits, but also saw in those endeavors the means by which to craft its identity, construct its social status, and ensure its future prosperity.

The political implications of patronage, particularly literary and artistic, on the part of the royal family or individuals in Tudor and Stuart England is not a new area of investigation. This book, however, is significant as a rare attempt to examine patronage across a spectrum of cultural arenas as a family strategy. Casting a broad eye on Cecil activity, the authors of this essay collection expand our usually narrow conception of patronage as well as testify to the fruitfulness of multidisciplinary study. Juxtaposed essays on building, planting, collecting, economic policy, and marriage-making speak to each other across the dividers of titles and section headers. Recurring themes and common conclusions throughout Patronage, Culture, and Power offer an understanding of Cecil patronage that is rich in both depth and breadth. At the same time, they allude to meaningful relationships among the various threads of that patronage. It is regrettable that none of the essays in the volume addresses more directly the interconnectedness of the diverse manifestations of Cecil patronage. While trying to erase the line between politics and culture, this tome nevertheless maintains unnecessarily and perhaps detrimentally strict categorization of cultural spheres.

The fullness of the picture Patronage, Culture, and Power paints is a consequence not only of its disciplinary range, but also of its encompassing interest in the Cecil family, as noted above. Thomas Cecil, often overshadowed by his half-brother Robert’s more successful political career, is introduced in the book as a patron of architecture, while two contributions discuss the women of the Cecil family. The latter essays are especially welcome, given the recent emergence of a literature attending to female agency in early modern England. Croft’s essay on Mildred Cooke, true to the guiding mission of the volume, argues that Cooke played a part in establishing the intellectual atmosphere of the Cecil household, that she was a patron of universities, and that she used art (at least once) to champion Cecilian politics. In contrast, Helen Payne’s article, which focuses on marriage matches, might have been more germane to the issue of patronage, had it concentrated instead on the cultural activities of the Cecil women at court and their relationship to Anne of Denmark, an active benefactor of artists, engineers, and writers.

Despite attempts in Patronage, Culture, and Power to expand our familiarity with the Cecil family, its focus remains on William and his successor, Robert: exactly half of the essays in the volume focus on either Burghley or Salisbury as their prime subject, while an additional three essays examine their shared patronage practices. The book’s emphasis on these two men enables its authors to make a strong case for their self-conscious use of patronage to serve political and social ends. If the essays do not support the volume’s introductory claim that the Cecil family ought to be considered among the greatest of English patrons of the era, they certainly demonstrate that the father and son were. The sense of patronage as a family affair for the Cecils is further lost due to the emphasis placed on William and Robert as individuals engaging in discrete practice. One wishes that the relationship between projects sponsored by father and son were explicated to give a better sense of how these two men might have influenced one another. If the Cecils were committed to patronage as an element in dynasty formation, it would make sense that they might have strategized collaboratively as well.

In striving for a multidimensional image of the Cecils, the book often seems to sacrifice both supporting cast and situational context. Only James Knowles, writing on Salisbury and Ben Jonson, considers the importance of the relationship between patron and patronized. In other essays, unelaborated references to leading artists, such as John de Critz and Solomon de Caus, fail to illuminate Cecil patronage for anyone unfamiliar with early modern English culture. The significance of the family’s patronage can only be assessed fully if we are aware of the position their employees and patronees occupied within their respective cultural spheres. Likewise, we cannot gain an accurate appreciation of Cecil patronage without comparative examples. Only a few of the essays, among them Susan Bracken’s discussion of Salisbury’s art collection and Malcolm Airs’s piece on Theobalds, attend to the patronage practices of the Cecils’ peers. Because this volume is concerned with power, and power entails the negotiation of relationships, the lack of attention given to other early modern English patrons—understandable given the already vast nature of the project—nevertheless is disappointing.

At the heart of Patronage, Culture, and Power is the laudable goal of rethinking early modern conceptions of the interplay between politics and culture. The essays are unified in their mission to demonstrate how patronage became a tool through which the Cecils defined themselves politically and exercised their power. Essays such as James Sutton’s on entertainments performed for Elizabeth I make strong arguments for this position. Others, unable to follow through on the volume’s larger goals, are realized as descriptive expositions into Cecil tastes and interests. For the most part, however, even the more successful of the essays in the volume suffer from lack of contextualization. Readers will be unable to conceive fully the particular motivations for and repercussions of Cecil patronage unless they have precise knowledge of the family’s sociopolitical circumstances at any given moment in the fifty-plus years covered by the essays. Rarely do these essays suggest the specific benefits the Cecils’ gained through patronage or else analyze the specific instances in which Cecil patronage seems to have run amok. Instead, the texts are bound by a satisfaction with the rather vague conclusion that Cecil patronage proclaimed, increased, or otherwise affected, the family’s “power.”

The Cecils’ “power” is an underlying point of tension for the writers of this volume, who want desperately to exalt the family for its innovative cultural achievements, indicators of good taste, and enlightened Renaissance sensibilities, but are restrained, held back by a modern distaste for self-aggrandizement, accompanied by the potential for abuse and corruption. In fact, the introduction queries outright: Were the Cecils’ corrupt? Some of the essays that follow make attempts to extricate the Cecils from scandalous activity or faulty projects; at least one article places so much emphasis on acknowledging a less idealized version of the Cecil portrait that it loses track of its main point—the impact of Burghley’s patronage of intellectual and humanist pursuits; the question, ultimately, goes unanswered.

The examination of the Cecils offered by Patronage, Culture, and Power suggests that while we are eager to rethink politics and culture on early modern terms, we are not entirely ready for the consequence of doing so—a demand that we reconcile megalomaniac interests that exploit and manipulate with positive cultural leadership that edifies, beautifies, and cultivates. In his essay, Airs states that there was an “uncomfortable ostentation” about Theobalds, recognized even by Burghley. As much as they want to exalt the Cecils for their forward-thinkingness and cultural acumen, the authors of this collection leave us in the end with a sense that they are uncomfortable with the vast implications of the Cecils’ extravagant patronage.