Theobalds was the great Elizabethan house begun in 1564 by William Cecil, later the first Baron Burghley, just after the birth of his second son Robert. The house was intended to be palatial, ostensibly so that it would be an “alluring” house for Elizabeth I to stay on her progresses, but also as a suitable seat for Robert, in whom Burghley placed his hopes for the future of his political dynasty. Throughout the book, it is the “allurement” and “contentation” (contentment) of the monarch that are the aims of both Cecils as they use the house to secure their positions and to insure their futures. James Sutton's book covers the life of the house from its erection through its years as the major theater for Cecilian royal entertainments to its final transfer to the crown in 1607.

For the architecture of the building itself (of which nothing survives), Sutton relies on the scholarship of architectural historians, myself among them. Essays in Patronage, Culture and Power: The Early Cecils (ed. Pauline Croft [New Haven, CT, and London, 2002]) are frequently cited, as is John Summerson's article, “The Building of Theobalds, 1564–1585” (Archaeologia 97 [1959]: 107–26). As a result, Sutton's second chapter on “Material Theobalds” (i.e., the architecture and gardens) is largely derivative, and he does not seem to have consulted many of the original documents himself, not even the Parliamentary Survey of 1649 (in the Public Record Office), referring to it only from quotes in Summerson's article. Furthermore, he tends to look at the building in a vacuum, not mentioning once the plan, discovered in 1999, of Lord Burghley's London house nor considering in any depth other houses of the period that also pursued decorative programs of loyalty and devotion to the queen (Hardwick Hall being an important example).

It is when Sutton goes beyond the physicality of the building to consider the “spatial poetics” (11) and the ways in which the house was used for ritual, theater, and the transmission of Cecilian propaganda that he is most insightful. In the third chapter (“Staging Theobalds: Legitimization, Retirement, and Debut”), for example, he analyzes the entertainments carried out for the queen that put forward the Cecils’ agenda. At first, like the decoration of the house and garden, these emphasized Burghley's lineage (far less distinguished than he made it appear) and his importance as the queen's lord treasurer. As Burghley grew older and Robert began to exhibit the skills that would eventually enable him to take over the elevated position his father occupied, the emphasis shifted. Larger sums of money were spent on the queen's visits, as the long-term stakes became higher. Sutton argues convincingly that these entertainments put forward Burghley's (unfulfilled) wish to retire and emphasized Robert's ability to take charge of the queen's complex financial affairs. This would not happen in Elizabeth's reign, although Robert was given the lesser post of secretary of state in 1596.

When Burghley died in 1598, Robert inherited Theobalds. In the nine years that he owned it, he made a number of changes to the interior (dismantling Burghley's illusionistic Great Chamber and introducing more staid, gilded paneling) and to the gardens, where he created new water features in the park. In the fourth chapter, Sutton interprets these and other alterations as Robert's attempt to reform Theobalds to make it “alluring” to Elizabeth's successor. Improvements to the park were particularly apposite to James VI of Scotland, who was known to be a keen hunter. On his accession, James was indeed greatly attracted to the new park and, equally, to the palatial splendor of the house itself. While Elizabeth was happy to bask in the flattering glow of her courtiers’ buildings, James and his family would have far greater architectural ambitions.

In the final chapter, Sutton examines, mostly through masques and entertainments, the gradual transfer of Theobalds from Robert Cecil to James I, something that he argues significantly diminished the status of the Cecils, albeit temporarily. This is hard to square with the facts. In the exchange for Theobalds, Cecil not only got Hatfield (if old-fashioned, still an historic royal house, where his father had informed Princess Elizabeth of her own accession to the throne) but sixteen other manors as well, many of which he was able to sell (a fact not mentioned by Sutton). As a result, he relieved himself of the enormous costs and inconveniences of entertaining the demanding James at Theobalds. Furthermore, Robert was now able to build himself a brand-new, far more fashionable house, yet one that could be used for entertaining the king and queen on a much more reasonable scale. The laments in the final scenes of the last Cecilian entertainments at Theobalds, which Sutton interprets as representing Robert's mourning for his lost patrimony, were surely rhetorical hyperbole. Cecil could hardly have let his real feelings of relief be known: he was finally unloading a house that was so unsuitable and costly that it would be pulled down within fifty years. In contrast, the stately house he built at Hatfield continues to this day to serve as the major seat of Robert Cecil's descendents, now the Marquesses of Salisbury.

James Sutton's book is important to historians as an attempt to fuse studies of architecture, space, iconography, and literature and to extract from them some idea of how such an important house was used, experienced, and read by the educated elite of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. As for a wider audience, the book itself lacks the “allure” of the great house itself, with far too many pages of text dwarfed by voluminous footnotes, many of which contain significant information that should not have been relegated to the smaller print at the bottom of the page. Most irritating is the mean little plan of Theobalds (6), a reproduction from Summerson's 1959 article. Given the frequent references to the major rooms in the house, a much larger, more detailed plan of at least the ground and first floors should have been substituted for some of the grainy, undistinguished portraits that are illustrated. A survey of the gardens would also have been useful, and readers wanting to consult Martin Andrews's article “Theobalds Palace” (which does include plans of the garden) should look at Garden History (21, no. 2 [Winter 1993]: 129–49), not The Journal of Garden History (a different publication), as cited in the bibliography and notes.