During the whole of the reign of Edward, Cecil had continued to enrich himself by grants, stewardships, reversions, and offices; not of course to the same extent as Somerset, Northumberland, Clinton, or Winchester, for he was a moderate man and loved safety, but on the accession of Mary he must have been very rich. During his mother’s life, which was a long one, he always looked upon Burghley House as hers, although he spent large sums of his own money upon buildings and improvements; but he inherited from his father large estates in Northamptonshire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and elsewhere. We have already noticed that he obtained the Crown manor of Wimbledon and other grants; but, in addition to those already noted, he obtained, in October 1551, the period of Somerset’s sacrifice, grants of the manor of Berchamstow and Deeping, in Lincolnshire; the manor and hall of Thetford, in the same county; the reversion of the manor of Wrangdike, Rutland; the manor of Liddington, Rutland, and a moiety of the rectory of Godstow. He was a large purchaser of land also in the county of Lincoln; so that although his household historian asserts that his lands never brought him in more than £4000 a year, his expenses were on a very lavish scale, and he had, as his friend the Duchess of Suffolk says in one of her letters to him, brought his wares to a good market. By his embroiderer’s account, already quoted, we see that at this period of his life he maintained thirty-six servitors wearing his badge and livery; but in the time of Elizabeth his establishments were on a truly princely footing. He had eighty servants wearing his livery, and we are told that the best gentlemen in England competed to enter his service; “I have nombered in his howse attending at table twenty gentlemen of his retayners of £1000 per annum a peece, in possession or reversion, and of his ordinarie men, as many more, some worth £1000, some worth 3, 5, 10, yea, £20,000, daily attending his service.”