Amidst his manifold public anxieties Cecil had to bear his share of private trouble. His notes in the Perpetual Calendar at Hatfield record the successive births and deaths of two infant William Cecils, one at Cannon Row in 1559, and the other at Wimbledon in 1561; but at this period he had a daughter and a son living, by his second wife. Thomas, his only son by his first marriage with Mary Cheke, was now a young man of twenty, and in order that he might receive the polish fitting to the heir of a great personage, his father consulted Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, the Ambassador in Paris, in the spring of 1561, with regard to sending him thither. Cecil’s own idea was to place him in the household of Coligny, the Admiral of France, now one of the acknowledged leaders of the Protestant party; but Throgmorton, who foresaw, doubtless, the rapidly approaching civil war, dissuaded him from this. “Though you have made the best choice of any man in France, yet for some respects I think the matter should be deferred.” His advice was that lodgings should be taken for young Cecil near the embassy, where he might share the Ambassador’s table. The youth, he thought, should be “taught to ride, play the lute, dance, play tennis, and use such exercises as are noted ornaments of courtiers.”[158] A subsequent recommendation of Thomas Windebank, the young man’s governor, to the effect that it would be well to accept Throgmorton’s offer, although Sir William Cecil was loth to trespass on his friend’s hospitality, in order that the youth “might learn to behave himself, not only at table, but otherwise, according to his estate,”[159] leads us to the conclusion that Thomas Cecil had thitherto not been an apt scholar. Some of the details of Thomas’s journey are curious. In addition to Windebank he was accompanied by two servants, and three geldings, which, Throgmorton thought, might as well be sold, as he could obtain others in Paris. The lodgings in Paris for the party and horses would cost about ten sun-crowns a month, and in addition to the money they brought they should have a letter of credit for three hundred crowns. Young Thomas had been to France before by way of Calais,[160] and on this occasion, that he might see fresh country, he went by Rye, Dieppe, and Rouen; and the intention was that he should stay in or near Paris for a year, and then proceed to Italy. Windebank appears to have been unequal to his task, and to have had no control over Thomas. In vain Sir William pressed both his son and Windebank to send him an account of their expenses, and from the first it is seen that the father was misgiving and anxious. Cecil was a reserved man, full of public affairs; but this correspondence[161] proves that he was also a man of deep family affection, and, above all, that he regarded with horror the idea that any scandal should attach to his honoured name. In his first letter to his son, 14th July 1561, after the arrival of the latter in