England
Cecil of Burghley — inherited six-quarter ancestral achievement
- Family / house
- Cecil; Winstone; Caerleon; Heckington; Walcot
- Family / cadet branch
- Cecil of Burghley; parent achievement of the Exeter and Salisbury lines
- Armiger / bearer
- William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
- Entity type
- family
- Social rank / class
- peer
- Heraldic authority
- English heraldic usage; contemporary or near-contemporary Garter and stained-glass representations
- Record basis
- ancient_usage
- Issued / first recorded
- 1572
- Until / superseded
- 1598
- Historical period
- Tudor England
- Grant / record reference
- Garter stall-plate tradition; late-sixteenth-century heraldic panel recorded by Corpus Vitrearum USA, Philadelphia Museum of Art accession 69-226-1
- Blazon
- Quarterly of six: 1st and 6th, Barry of ten Argent and Azure, over all six escutcheons Sable, three, two and one, each charged with a lion rampant Argent; 2nd, per pale Gules and Azure, a lion rampant Argent sustaining a tree eradicated Vert, for Winstone; 3rd, Sable, a plate between three towers triple-towered Argent, their ports open, for Caerleon; 4th, Argent, on a bend cotised Gules three cinquefoils Or, for Heckington; 5th, Argent, a chevron between three chess-rooks Ermine, for Walcot. The achievement was shown within the Garter and ensigned by a coronet.
- Plain-English description
- The Cecil coat is repeated in the first and sixth quarters. Between them are four inherited ancestral coats associated with Winstone, Caerleon, Heckington and Walcot. The display is an expanded ancestral achievement rather than a new paternal coat.
- Tinctures
- Argent; Azure; Sable; Gules; Vert; Or; Ermine
- Charges / ordinaries
- ten bars; six escutcheons; six lions rampant; lion rampant; eradicated tree; plate; three triple-towered castles; bend cotised; three cinquefoils; chevron; three chess-rooks
- Crest
- Not specified in the cited heraldic-panel record; Cecil achievements elsewhere use six arrows in saltire bound with a belt and surmounted by a morion cap.
- Motto
- COR UNUM VIA UNA appears in later Cecil achievements; not stated on the cited panel record.
- Exterior ornaments
- Within the Garter and ensigned with a coronet in the late-sixteenth-century panel.
- Difference / variant
- This is the expanded ancestral form from which the principal Exeter and Salisbury male lines inherited their Cecil component. The four non-Cecil quarters are genealogical quarterings, not separate cadet differences.
- Source reference
- Corpus Vitrearum USA, Heraldic Panel: Arms of William Cecil
- Source
- Open source
Genealogical context
- Father
- Richard Cecil of Burghley
- Mother
- Jane Heckington
- Spouse(s)
- Mary Cheke; Mildred Cooke
- Children / next generation
- Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter; Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury; Elizabeth Cecil; Anne Cecil
Documented depiction
Notes / sources
The terms Winstone, Caerleon, Heckington and Walcot are conventional family attributions in later heraldic descriptions. The source securely documents the design, but it does not independently prove every medieval genealogical step by which each quarter entered the Cecil achievement.