The question of his remote ancestry is of no great importance to the purpose of the present book, although Cecil himself, who throughout his life was a diligent student of heraldry and genealogy, devoted considerable attention to it; and Camden was at the pains to trace his descent to a Robert Sitsilt, a gentleman of Wales in the time of William Rufus (1091). It may be sufficient for our purpose to adhere to a written pedigree at Hatfield House annotated and continued by William Cecil, which proves, so far as such documents can, that the statements made by his opponents to the end of his life that he was of “base origin,” were entirely untrue. This pedigree traces the descent of the statesman’s great-grandfather Richard Sitsilt, who died in 1508 possessing considerable estates in Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, to the ancient Welsh family of Sitsilt; but its interest and trustworthiness really commences with Cecil’s own continuation of the pedigree from his great-grandfather to himself. At the end of the engrossed genealogy he has written, “Here endeth ye old Roole in parchmᵗ,” and “The contynuance of ye line in ye heyres males untill this yere 1565.” This continuation shows that his grandfather David, the third son of Richard Sitsilt, came across England and settled at Stamford,[3] whilst his elder brothers remained in possession of the ancestral acres at Alterennes, Herefordshire. In the perpetual calendar at Hatfield, this David’s death is recorded by his grandson as follows: “David Cecill avus meus obiit Oct. 27 Hen. VIII.”[4] (1535). He was an alderman of Stamford, and appears to have possessed a good estate in Lincolnshire, which he purchased in 1507; and was appointed in 1512 Water-bailiff of Wittlesea Mere, in Huntingdonshire, and Keeper of the Swans throughout all the fen country.