(by Ed Moloney, Sunday Tribune)

"One thing is for sure", sighed the Irish official, "the Cranborne's of England have been around for 400 years will still be around when people have long forgotten who William Hague was."

Although it might be difficult for observers of the peace process to believe it was actually possible to detect a hint of sympathy in some Irish government circles for the Tory leader last week as the details emerged of his bruising encounter with this scion of one of England's oldest and most powerful aristocratic families.

Cranborne's solo run on House of Lords reform, accepting the principle of fundamental change while preserving an hereditary foothold for the aristocracy, was a classic example of the English upper class bending with the wind to survive. But Cranborne's selfish ruthlessness revived unpleasant memories in the mind of Irish officialdom they would much prefer had remained buried.

It remains to be seen who comes out of this affair most damaged, Cranborne or Hague, but some on the Irish side of the peace process are in little doubt that the Tory peer was probably the single most dangerous obstacle to the Northern Ireland peace process in its early years, from 1992 to the ultimate demise of John Major's Tory government.

"He was the Ethiopian in the lumber supply", complained one Dublin official. "He had a hold of some sort over Major. As far as we were concerned he was the filter that decided what Major could do".

What Major didn't do or couldn't do, of course, was to throw open the door of the negotiating chamber to Sinn Féin. He blocked it with the decommissioning demand and that resulted in the destruction of much of Canary Wharf and for a while also the prospects of peace in Northern Ireland. Not a few in the Irish government would hold the ardent Unionist sympathies of the Viscount Robert Michael James Cranborne and Baron Essenden in the County of Rutland at least partly responsible.

The Cranborne's have long been used to influencing the process of government in Britain and time and time again that influence, sometimes exercised via the black arts, has affected the destinies of this island.

The family's fortunes were founded by William Cecil, Lord Burghley whose influence on English government was to last for forty years during which the plantation of Ulster was begun and the roots of the modern day Troubles put down. He was Elizabeth I's chief minister from 1558, becoming Lord High Treasurer from 1572 until 1598.

Burghley's fear that Catholic Ireland could be the springboard for Spanish invasion or more likely a Popish plot to assassinate the Protestant Queen led him to set up the first organised intelligence gathering operation in English history. He was by all accounts a skilled spymaster who developed sophisticated cyphers so that agents placed strategically in foreign courts could report to him in safety.

The family, properly known as the Cecil's, went on from strength to strength accumulating a host of titles in the process. Burghley's eldest son Thomas was created Earl of Exeter by James I in 1604 while his younger son, Robert, was created Earl of Salisbury and succeeded his father as Elizabeth's principal advisor. He also built Hatfield House, one of the grandest aristocratic homes in England which his direct heir, the present Viscount Cranborne will one day inherit.

Another descendant, James Cecil was Lord Chamberlain to George III and raised to the marquessate in 1789. There was only one blip along the way. The 4th Earl of Salisbury converted to Roman Catholicism and was impeached for high treason but the charges were dropped and a few years later the family were granted their present titles.

The Cecil's were there at the start of English expansionism and arguably are there at the end of it too. But possibly their finest hour came during the nineteenth century when the 3rd marquess, Lord Salisbury was three times prime minister from 1885 to 1902, overseeing the construction of much of the British Empire.

Not surprisingly Salisbury was a fervent supporter of the Unionist cause. He opposed Home Rule in Gladstone's day and again in 1893 when he organised the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill in the House of Lords. And it was to Salisbury and a group of leading English aristocrats that Edward Carson turned to in 1912 when he wanted to mobilise Northern Protestants to the Unionist cause. In effect Salisbury became a recruiting sergeant for Carson's UVF.

Support for the Union is part of the family inheritance and the present heir to the Salisbury title, Viscount Cranborne is a veritable chip off the old block. "Its a solemn family duty to defend the union with Ireland, the Church of England and the monarchy and that's how he sees himself", says a Tory admirer.

After an education at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, Cranborne slid effortlessly into a political career contesting and winning the safe Tory seat of Dorset South.

In 1982 he put his foot on the first rung of the political ladder when he was made a parliamentary private secretary but then Northern Ireland intervened. He joined the ranks of a small but influential group of integrationist Tory MP's who, influenced by Enoch Powell and Jim Molyneaux, opposed Jim Prior's devolution plans and he quit his government post, earning Margaret Thatcher's enmity and ending his House of Commons career.

A few years later he inherited one of his father's titles, Baron Essenden in the County of Rutland and he entered the House of Lords where he had the foresight to spot the up and coming John Major and back him. After the 1992 election Major made him a Defence parliamentary secretary and then asked him to run his campaign when he re-submitted himself for the Tory leadership in a bid to silence Euro-critics.

A founder member of the Friends of the Union, he was one of the most hawkish members of the Major Cabinet on Ireland. A member of the Cabinet sub-committee on NI he reportedly urged Major to declare war on the IRA if they persisted with their big bombs in England by appointing a security supremo to crush them. As he demonstrated in the House of Lords during the passage of the Good Friday Bill he also strongly supported the precondition of IRA decommissioning and was never slow to express his scepticism about the IRA's intentions.

Beleagured as he was by Euro sceptics Major could hardly afford to antogonise the Unionist wing of his party and Cranborne, by all accounts, let Major know precisely what he would do if the Unionists' interests were threatened. At one famous meeting in 1995 he told admiring Tories he would resign if Major reneged on the principle of Unionist consent.

The nadir in Irish-Cranborne relations came just before the publication of the Framework document when Dublin accused Cranborne of leaking the plan to The Times in an effort to mobilise Tory and Unionist opposition. Cranborne's defenders deny the charge and claim that he couldn't have been the leaker since the version which appeared in The Times had not yet landed on the NI committee's desk.

"Cranborne actually stabilised things after that leak", argues one defender of the man. "Backbenchers were besieging John Major and Cranborne appeared by his side to declare his support for the prime minister".

Since the Tories departed government Cranborne has kept up his involvement in Irish affairs most notably by combining with the former IRA gunman turned informer Sean O'Callaghan to form perhaps the most bizarre anti-republican double act seen since the Troubles began.

Some Conservatives believe Cranborne's deviousness over the reform of the House of Lords last week was a shade too sharp for his own good. The party grassroots are running up to three to one against the peer, according to party sources. "There's just not the same deference for toffs as there used to be", claimed one. It would be one of the great ironies if a Cecil was to be responsible for ending the oldest political relationship in English history, that between the aristocracy and the Tory party.

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