as clerk or registrar of the court of requests
which the protector, possibly at Latimer's instigation, illegally set up in
Somerset House "to hear poor men's complaints." He also seems to have acted
as private secretary to the protector, and was in some danger at the time
of the protector's fall (October 1549). The lords opposed to Somerset
ordered his detention on the 10th of October, and in November he was in the
Tower. On the 25th of January 1550 he was bound over in recognizances to
the value of a thousand marks. However, he soon ingratiated himself with
Warwick, and on the 15th of September 1550 he was sworn one of the king's
two secretaries. He was knighted on the 11th of October 1551, on the eve of
Somerset's second fall, and was congratulated on his success in escaping
his benefactor's fate. In April he became chancellor of the order of the
Garter. But service under Northumberland was no bed of roses, and in his
diary Cecil recorded his release in the phrase _ex misero aulico factus
liber et mei juris_. His responsibility for Edward's illegal "devise" of
the crown has been studiously minimized by Cecil himself and by his
biographers. Years afterwards, he pretended that he had only signed the
"devise" as a witness, but in his apology to Queen Mary he did not venture
to allege so flimsy an excuse; he preferred to lay stress on the extent to
which he succeeded in shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of
his brother-in-law, Sir John Cheke, and other friends, and on his intrigues
to frustrate the queen to whom he had sworn allegiance. There is no doubt
that he saw which way the wind was blowing, and disliked Northumberland's
scheme; but he had not the courage to resist the duke to his face. As soon,
however, as the duke had set out to meet Mary, Cecil became the most active
intriguer against him, and to these efforts, of which he laid a full
account before Queen Mary, he mainly owed his immunity. He had, moreover,
had no part in the divorce of Catherine or in the humiliation of Mary in
Henry's reign, and he made no scruple about conforming to the religious
reaction. He went to mass, confessed, and out of sheer zeal and in no
official capacity went to meet Cardinal Pole on his pious mission to
England in December 1554, again accompanying him to Calais in May 1555. It
was rumoured in December 1554 that Cecil would succeed Sir William Petre as
secretary, an office which, with his chancellorship of the Garter, he h