“Very well,” said the farmer, relenting.  “Come in, and we’ll do the best we can for you.  It’s going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you’re that.”  And a few minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins’s cosy kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.

Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story of the British Peerage.  As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman.  His voice and bearing proclaimed that fact.  But the farmer little suspected the true rank of the man he was thus “entertaining unawares,” or all that was to come from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and so entertaining.

Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in the land.  Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire; and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held their heads among the highest.  One of them was none other than the famous Lord Burleigh, one of England’s greatest statesmen, favourite Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters.  So great was my Lord Burleigh’s wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,

“he had four places of residence—­his lodgings at Court, his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross, to which he loved to retire from harness.  At his house in London he supported a family of fourscore persons, without counting those who attended him in public.

“He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.  Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and Elizabeth’s formed no exception to the rule (for they cost between L1,000 and L2,000), the only wonder is that his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to leave his son L25,000 in money and valuable effects, besides L4,000 a year in landed estates.”

Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both raised to Earldoms—­of Exeter and Salisbury—­on the same day.

Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms—­that of Exeter—­and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates, although the knowledge gave him little pleasure.  His parents had died in his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir, the lad was left to his own devices.  In good time he had wooed and married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon, who proved as wayward as she was winsome.  His wedded life was indeed so far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.