Portrait of an Elizabethan: the Career and Character of Sir Michael Hickes
Alan G.R. Smith describes how, in the system of government organized by the Cecils, Hickes, the ambitious son of a London tradesman, became a rich and influential figure.
Michael Hickes was a self-made man. His family was of Gloucestershire yeoman stock but, some time before his birth, his parents, Robert and Juliana Hickes, dug up their west-country roots and went to London, where they set up a mercer’s shop in Cheapside. Michael, the eldest of their family of six sons, was born in October 1543 and therefore grew to adolescence during the violent Marian reaction to the Edwardian church settlement.
The martyrdoms of Cranmer and other Protestant leaders during the years 1555-8 probably had a considerable effect on his mind. By the autumn of 1559, when he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, he was very receptive to the Puritan influences that were so important in the university during the 1560’s.
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