Significant English lineages worth discussing here (no original research in primary sources required) include those that interconnect in the matters of the Shakespeare literature authorship and the financial control of the country established in the 18th century. Quigley's book Anglo-American Establishment, concerned with 20th century history, begins by stressing the political dominance of the "Cecil Bloc" of families in the late 19th century which orbited around Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil (1830-1903), Viscount Cranborne and Marquess of Salisbury. The Cecil family seems to have arisen as Welsh supporters of the Tudors, and the first to obtain both the Cranborne and Salisbury titles was Sir Robert Cecil, secretary of state to QE1.
As it happens all three primary candidates to the Shakespearean authorship were closely linked by marriage to this Robert Cecil, the son of William Cecil Lord Burghley and of Mildred Cooke, sometimes acclaimed the most learned English woman of her day. Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, had three other well educated and talented sisters ;
Elizabeth, mother of the Hoby brothers
Anne, the mother of Sir Francis Bacon
Catherine the linguist, first wife of Sir Henry Killigrew, a close ally of Robert Cecil in the late Elizabethan court ; they were brothers-in-law.
Robert Cecil's sister Anne was the first wife of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, long the favourite alternate Shakespeare along with Bacon.
In 2005 Brenda James and William Rubinstein published the definitive identification of the author, The Truth Will Out : Unmasking the Real Shakespeare. Their man is Sir Henry Neville (c.1564-1615), and their evidence and arguments pretty much conclusive. Neville's wife Anne was a daughter of Henry Killigrew and Catherine Cooke. So that all the arguments assembled over the years about the status and learning of the author (while important and compelling enough to disprove William Shakespeare himself) are more or less irrelevant in separating Bacon, De Vere and Neville, who all moved in the most influential and learned circles of the Cooke and Cecil families. Bacon and De Vere can be excluded on other grounds ; the former a prolific but talentless writer, while De Vere (1550-1604) died too early to author the plays composed and performed after 1604.
As it happens all three primary candidates to the Shakespearean authorship were closely linked by marriage to this Robert Cecil, the son of William Cecil Lord Burghley and of Mildred Cooke, sometimes acclaimed the most learned English woman of her day. Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, had three other well educated and talented sisters ;
Elizabeth, mother of the Hoby brothers
Anne, the mother of Sir Francis Bacon
Catherine the linguist, first wife of Sir Henry Killigrew, a close ally of Robert Cecil in the late Elizabethan court ; they were brothers-in-law.
Robert Cecil's sister Anne was the first wife of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, long the favourite alternate Shakespeare along with Bacon.
In 2005 Brenda James and William Rubinstein published the definitive identification of the author, The Truth Will Out : Unmasking the Real Shakespeare. Their man is Sir Henry Neville (c.1564-1615), and their evidence and arguments pretty much conclusive. Neville's wife Anne was a daughter of Henry Killigrew and Catherine Cooke. So that all the arguments assembled over the years about the status and learning of the author (while important and compelling enough to disprove William Shakespeare himself) are more or less irrelevant in separating Bacon, De Vere and Neville, who all moved in the most influential and learned circles of the Cooke and Cecil families. Bacon and De Vere can be excluded on other grounds ; the former a prolific but talentless writer, while De Vere (1550-1604) died too early to author the plays composed and performed after 1604.
