sations of impiety and sentences of death.

The least faulty of the many editions of the _Acerba_ is that of
Venice, dated 1510. The earliest known, which has become excessively
rare, is that of Brescia, which has no date, but is ascribed to 1473
or thereabouts.

CECIL, the name of a famous English family. This house, whose two
branches hold each a marquessate, had a great statesman and
administrator to establish and enrich it. The first Lord Burghley's many
inquiries concerning the origin of his family created for it more than
one splendid and improbable genealogy, although his grandfather is the
first ascertained ancestor. In the latter half of the 15th century a
family of yeomen or small gentry with the surname of Seyceld, whose
descendants were accepted by Lord Burghley as his kinsmen, lived on
their lands at Allt yr Ynys in Walterstone, a Herefordshire parish on
the Welsh marches. Of the will of Richard ap Philip Seyceld of Allt yr
Ynys, made in 1508, one David ap Richard Seyceld, apparently his younger
son, was overseer. This David seems identical with David Cyssell,
Scisseld or Cecill, a yeoman admitted in 1494 to the freedom of Stamford
in Lincolnshire. He may well have been one of those men from the Welsh
border who fought at Bosworth, for at the funeral of Henry VII. he
appears as a yeoman of the guard and is given a livery of black cloth.
At Stamford he prospered, being three times mayor and three times member
of parliament for the borough, and he served as sheriff of
Northamptonshire in 1532-1533. Remaining in the service of Henry VIII.
he was advanced to be yeoman of the chamber and sergeant-at-arms, being
rewarded with several profitable leases and offices. His first wife was
the daughter of a Stamford alderman, and his second the already twice
widowed heir of a Lincolnshire squire. By the first marriage David Cecil
left at his death in 1536 a son and heir, Richard Cecil, who enjoyed a
place at court as yeoman of the king's wardrobe under Henry VIII. and
Edward VI. A gentleman of the privy chamber and sometime sheriff of
Rutland, Richard Cecil had his share at the distribution of abbey lands,
St Michael's priory in Stamford being among the grants made to him.
William Cecil, only son of Richard, was born, by his own account, in
1520, at Bourne in Lincolnshire. He advanced himself first in the
service of the protector Somerset, after whose fall, his great abilities
being necessary to the counc