Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, was the only son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, and Mary Browne, daughter of Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu. Shakespeare's two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, were dedicated to Southampton, who is frequently identified as the Fair Youth of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Southampton's mother, Mary Wriothesley, Countess of Southampton (1552–1607)
Southampton in his teens, c. 1590–1593, attributed to John de Critz
Shakespeare's dedication to Southampton of The Rape of Lucrece, 1594
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley was an English statesman, the chief adviser of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. In his description in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, A.F. Pollard wrote, "From 1558 for forty years the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England."
Coat of arms of William Cecil as found in John Gerard's The herball or Generall historie of plantes (1597)
Portrait of William Cecil, c. after 1570
Engraving of Queen Elizabeth I, William Cecil and Sir Francis Walsingham, by William Faithorne, 1655