Lord Burghley’s “Ten Precepts” for his Son Robert Cecil: A New Edition

Lord Burghley's "Ten Precepts" has never been edited adequately, as the standard text (in Louis B. Wright's Advice to a Son) modernizes an early but inferior transcript. After tracing the initial manuscript circulation of the "Ten Precepts," the present essay establishes a critical edition based on the earliest surviving transcripts. A stemma traces the descent of these transcripts from Burghley's lost holograph, showing that each belongs to one of two related but distinct lineages, whose relationship provides the basis for the edition. Because no single transcript is manifestly superior to the others, the old-spelling version of the edition records the variant readings that appear in the best texts of both lineages. Since many of Burghley's terms remain in usage but have lost their original significance, they are illuminated by historical glosses keyed into the old-spelling version. The paper ends with a version of the text in which its orthography and punctuation are modernized. [F.T.]