Christopher Maginn. William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor State

“To write his history as it deserves to be written would be to write the history of England during the latter half of the sixteenth century; for no statesman was ever so completely identified with the duties of his office as Sir William Cecil.” Thus wrote the Victorian scholar J. W. Burgon. Burgon has been heeded by most historians of the Elizabethan period over the past century, with only a few brave souls such as Conyers Read, B. W. Beckingsale, and, most recently, Stephen Alford—whose Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth (2010) is a model of lucidity and compression—taking up the challenge. In attempting to write the history of Cecil's dealings with Ireland throughout his long career, Christopher Maginn has been braver still by taking on a topic in regard to which Cecil's role has been of continuing and crucial importance—as often as not by his absence or neglect as by his active engagement.

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