Thomas Burghley

“ For his own part his desire had always been to see the Queen married to a prince of the House of Austria, with which it was well to be in alliance; but since old friends cast them off, and your Majesty refused to confirm the treaties, or receive a minister at your court, [418] they must seek new friends.”
The current of affairs and the Queen’s fickleness evidently displeased the Lord Treasurer. In September (1578) he had unsuccessfully begged leave of absence to visit Burghley, [419] where the rebuilding of the mansion was still progressing, under the care of Sir Thomas Cecil. ”

“ His master must make peace or be supported in war. Essex was present at the interview; and although the Lord Treasurer invited him to speak he remained obstinately silent, except to say that he did not see how religious dissensions would allow of peace being made with Spain.
At length Burghley announced that the Queen would send an embassy to France to settle with Henry the whole question of peace or war, in conjunction with an embassy from the States. The embassy consisted of Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Thomas Wilkes, and Dr. Herbert ”

“ Thomas has utterly no mind nor disposition to apply to any learning; being carried away by other affections that rule him, so that it maketh him forget his duty in all things;” and with this Windebank resigns his charge, for Thomas had openly defied him; advocates his immediate recall if the war in France will allow him to come, or otherwise that he should be sent to Flanders. ”

“ He personally can have had but little enjoyment from his splendid houses and stately living. He must have been almost constantly at court, or hard [256] at work at his house in Cannon Row, Westminster, handy for Whitehall, rather than at his new palace in the Strand, where his wife and family lodged. He seems to have had no hobby but books and gardens, and to have taken no exercise except on his rare visits to Theobalds or Burghley, when he would jog round his garden paths on an ambling mule. ”

“ I think it would be good for your Lordship, but not if you do as we hear your Lordship did last time: taking great journeys abroad ten or twelve miles a day, and using liberal diet with company dinners and suppers. We take another way, dining two or three together, having but one dish of meat at most, and taking the air afoot or on horseback moderately.” [401] In July (1577) Burghley started from Theobalds for his Lincolnshire estates, and thence to Buxton. Leicester wrote to him there that the Queen was desirous of receiving a “tun of Buxton water in hogsheads;” ”

“ A similar but more flattering offer was made in 1573 by the unfortunate Earl of Essex, who proposed that his eldest son, then only about six years old, should be betrothed to Burghley’s daughter (Lansdowne MSS., 17) . A few hours before he died (21st September 1576) the Earl wrote a most pathetic letter to Lord Burghley, praying him to take the same son into his household, and beseeching him to be good to him for the sake of his father, “who lived and died your true and unfeigned friend” (Hatfield Papers) . It is sad to consider that the son grew up to be the enemy of his father’s friend ”

“ The same day a very strong remonstrance from the English Council was written to Orange, saying that the piracy of the Flushing men was rendering his cause odious to all Christendom, and would ruin his enterprise.
The Netherlanders, especially Paul Buiz, who lodged [307] with Burghley’s servant, Herll, in Redcross Street, did their best to excuse the Flushingers, and begged that “these rough men be not roughly dealt with.” ”

“ All unsuspecting still, De Spes was comforting himself with the reflection that the capture of Bailly was an unimportant incident; he urged Alba and the King to immediate action, fumed at the instructions he received to hold back Philip’s letters to Mary and Norfolk until he had orders to deliver them, and sneered at the timid delay. “As all of Lord Burghley’s jests have turned out well for him hitherto, he is ready to undertake anything, and has no fear of danger. They and the French together make great fun of our meekness.” ”

“ If I speed well, I will adventure to be rich; if not, I will not live to see the end of my poverty.”
[567] His entry in his diary recording the fact runs thus: “1589. April 4 Die Veneris inter hor 3 et 4 mane obdormit in Domino, Mildreda Domina Burgley.” She is interred at Westminster Abbey, with her daughter the Countess of Oxford; a very long Latin inscription is on the tomb, written by Burghley, recording their many virtues and the writer’s grief at their loss. There is at Hatfield (part iii. 973) a note of the mourners and arrangements for the funeral in Lord Burghley’s handwriting. ”

“ In July 1576 he was residing at Paris, and frequently supplied political information to Burghley, whose ‘servant’ he is described as being (cf. Lansd. MS. 23, art. 75) . He claimed ‘familiar acquaintance’ with the celebrated French publicist, Jean Bodin, from whom he seems to have derived some of the news he forwarded to Burghley. ”

“ As one of the royal wards the boy came under the care of Lord Burghley, at whose house in London he lived under the tutorship of his maternal uncle, Arthur Golding, the translator of Ovid. His violent temper and erratic doings were a constant source of anxiety to Burghley, who nevertheless in 1571 gave him his eldest daughter, Anne, in marriage. Oxford more than once asked for a military or a naval command, but Burghley hoped that his good looks together with his skill in dancing and in feats of arms woiUd win for him a high position at court. ”

“ In April 1597 he was persuading his father to allow him to live in London, and in August his parents were corresponding with Burghley respecting a proposal to marry him to Burghley's granddaughter, Bridget Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. ”

“ Burghley thus writes to Walsingham (16th April 1576) : “I have perused all the letters and memorandum of Mr. Beale’s concerning his voyage into Zeeland, and so well allow of the whole course therein taken by the Lords, that both with heart and hand I sign them.” [392] The Flushing pirates appear to have offered some insult to the Earl of Oxford, Burghley’s son-in-law, on his way to England, at which the Treasurer was extremely angry, [393] an unusual thing [306] with him. ”

“ I pray God we have not cause to remember one thing that was made of the Scots by the Englishmen; that we do not curse for this a long grey beard with a white head, witless, that will make all the world think us heartless. You know whom I mean.” [556]
Though Burghley had struggled for thirty years to maintain peace with Spain, when war was inevitable he took far more than his share of the labour of organising it. As usual, he worked early and late, sometimes almost in despair at the Queen’s penuriousness and irritability, and himself suffering incessantly. ”

“ Beale wrote to Lord Burghley (Harl. MSS., 4663) , saying that she had abandoned all ambition, she was old and ill, and was ready to swear to anything for her liberation. This, however, was before she received Mendoza’s letter (6th May?) advising her on no account to accept her release (Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth) .
[481] The Queen had nicknames for most of her friends; Burghley was the Leviathan or the Spirit, Hatton was Bellwether or Lyddes, Walsingham was Moon, Alençon was Frog, Simier was Ape, Ralegh was Water, Leicester was Sweet Robin, and so forth. ”

“ When he arrived [264] in Flanders he made a long report of his embassy, containing the following interesting appreciation of Burghley as he appeared to his greatest enemy: “The principal person in the Council is William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, a Knight of the Garter. He is a man of mean sort, but very astute, false, lying, and full of artifice. He is a great heretic, and such a clownish Englishman as to believe that all the Christian princes joined together are not able to injure the sovereign of his country, and he therefore treats their ministers with great arrogance. ”

“ Many of the Portuguese gentlemen who surrounded the pretender, Don Antonio, had for years sold themselves both to Philip and to England—and played false to both. It has been seen that Lord Burghley’s network of secret intelligence, under the management of Phillips, was extremely extensive; and, amongst others, several of these Portuguese were employed. [616] The most popular physician in London at [468] the time was Dr. Ruy Lopez, a Portuguese Jew, the Queen’s physician, who was frequently employed by Burghley as an intermediary with the spies, in order to avert suspicion from them. ”

“ On the 14th, two days afterwards, the tribunal sat in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle, and Mary, almost crippled with rheumatism, painfully hobbled to her place, supported by her Steward, Sir Andrew Melvil. On the right of the Lord Chancellor sat Lord Burghley. That the proceedings against Mary, in which he had from the first taken an active part, were in his opinion necessary for the safety of England, is clear from his many letters upon the subject ”

“ How incessant and varied Lord Burghley’s labours still were may be seen by the great number of letters addressed to him, entreating him for help, influence, or advice. The Catholic Earl of Arundel from the Tower, the Earl of Huntingdon, Lord Buckhurst, Lord Cobham, and a host of other nobles appealed to him to forward their suits; Puritan divines like Hammond, Cartwright, Humphreys, and Travers; prelates like Whitgift, Aylmer, Herbert, and Sandys, by common accord chose him as the arbiter of their constant disputes. ”

“ Whilst Elizabeth slowly made her way from one great house to another, by Gorhambury, [355] Dunstable, Woburn, [356] and so to Kenilworth, the correspondence on the negotiations for the Alençon match became warmer and warmer. Agents and messengers speeded backwards and forwards with portraits and amiable trifles, particularly from the side of England.
There was a good reason for this. Before even the treaty of alliance was signed, Burghley had deplored that Charles IX. and his mother were cooling in the agreement for France and England jointly to aid the Flemish rebels. ”

“ Under the transparent pretext of aiding Don Antonio, English armed ships were hounding Spanish commerce from the seas and harrying Spanish settlements; the English troops under Leicester, and the Scots under the Master of Gray, were fighting Spaniards in Holland, and the English militant Protestant party had now supplanted Burghley’s policy on all sides. But still the cautious old statesman patiently worked in his own way to minimise the dangers with which his political opponents had already surrounded the Queen. ”

“ By the death of Bacon, the fatal illness of Sussex, and [374] the defection of Hatton, Lord Burghley was at this time almost alone in the Council; for Crofts, the Controller, a regular pensioner of Spain and a Catholic, was a man of no influence; and, according to Mendoza, the Lord Treasurer in November told the Queen plainly that she must appoint two more Councillors of his way of thinking, “to oppose Leicester and his gang.” It was probably in pursuance of this policy that Burghley cast about for some counterbalancing influence to be used against Leicester. ”

“ Of the ability of Burghley there can be but one opinion, and it is extraordinary that he compromised himself with a scheme for the destruction of a defenceless and innocent woman for no other reason than to please Elizabeth. His attitude to Mary cannot be defended. Bourgoyne refers to him as a very vehement (very violent) man. That Burghley's private opinion was contrary to the attitude he was compelled to take up may, we think, be suggested. His conduct towards Mary was intelligible only as a stern command from his Sovereign. With Walsingham the case is different. ”

“ On 9 June 1589 he was elected through Burghley's influence to the bishopric of Durham. On 11 Dec. 1594, and in February 1594-5, he wrote beautiful and pathetic appeals to Burghley on behalf of Lady Margaret Neville, who had been condemned on account of the rebellion of her father, Charles, sixth earl of Westmoreland, and he was not only successful in his application for mercy, but gained a pension for the lady. ”

“ Burghley was impressed with the engaging personality, as well as the extensive possessions of young Henry Wriothesley, and, backed by a guardian’s privilege, wanted to secure him for his granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Vere, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford. The young Earl seems to have become, under the persuasions of his mother and grandfather, to some extent, engaged. It was a suitable marriage in every way, had but the young people loved each other. ”

“ The Venetian Ambassador in France writes at this time (24th July) : “The States are sending three representatives to England to urge the Queen to continue the war, as in her councils there are not wanting those who recommend this course, chiefly the Earl of Essex; but the Lord Treasurer is opposed, and, more important still, the Queen herself is inclined to peace.”
[651] Desiderata Curiosa.
[652] A superficial observer, Dudley Carlton, writes a few days after Burghley’s death: “There is so much business to be thought of on the Lord Treasurer’s death. ”

“ The persistent attacks upon Burghley and his policy were not confined to Essex and the Puritans. The Spanish Jesuit party in Flanders, which in former years had often looked upon him with sympathy and sometimes with hope, now cast upon him the responsibility of everything that happened in England, even when the policy was dictated by Burghley’s opponents. In all the plots of Holt, Yorke, Archer, Cahill, and the rest of the desperadoes in Flanders, Burghley was one of the principal objects of attack. ”