who acted with him were imprisoned by the privy council, he escaped with impunity.

Cecil certainly foresaw that the accession of Elizabeth to the throne was an event not far distant, and with consummate skill he managed to pay his court to that princess without exciting the suspicion of her bigotted sister. When that event happened, Cecil was the first person sworn of Elizabeth's privy-council, and he was at the same time created secretary of state. One of the first measures which he recommended to the attention of the queen, was to meet the spirit of the times by a thorough reformation of the church. He urged upon her consideration the facts, that the nation had expressed itself decidedly in favour of such a step,—that the protestant party confidently looked to her for it,— that she had nothing to hope but much to fear from the catholic party,—— and that it became her to vindicate that supremacy in matters ecclesiastical as well as civil which her royal father had so boldly claimed and so highly valued. By such representations he wrung a reluctant consent from Elizabeth to the measures which he proposed; her prejudices, however, frequently resisted her minister's discernment, and it was with the utmost difficulty that Cecil maintained his ground against Parker, Whitgift, and other intolerant prelates. His next care was to remedy the abuses in the coinage which had been greatly debased during the preceding reigns, and the measures which he adopted for this purpose proved so effectual that the money of England soon became the heaviest and finest in Europe. All his financial suggestions were not equally praiseworthy. The plan which he proposed to Elizabeth for augmenting her revenue without having recourse to parliament, is especially to be deprecated. His scheme was to erect a court for the correction of all abuses throughout the kingdom; its officers were to be invested with a kind of inquisitorial authority, and to punish defaulters by fines proportionate to their offences, which were all to be paid into the royal exchequer. Such a measure, if gone into, would have been to revive the practices of Empson and Dudley, and raise a storm of popular opposition which might have hurled even the stern and wary Elizabeth from the throne of England. Cecil was also the author of a scheme for raising a general loan equivalent in amount to a subsidy. A better feature in Cecil's character as a financier was his strict economy. Elizabeth, fortunately for herself and the nation, went along with him in this, and the consequence was that the government during her reign was conducted at less expense, in proportion to the transactions, domestic and foreign, in which it was engaged, than that of any other British sovereign. She also paid the debts with which her father and sister had encumbered the crown, amounting it is supposed to above £4,000,000; and at her death, left the states of Holland her debtors to the amount of £800,000, and France £450,000. Elizabeth, however, had her favourites on whom she occasionally lavished her treasures with a most prodigal hand, such especially was Essex, who, at different times, had received from the queen pecuniary gifts to the extent of £700,000. Then there were the usual host of needy and supplicating courtiers who beset both the queen and her minister on all occasions with their importunities. All this last tribe were treated by Cecil with the contempt they merited,

Nanton's Regalia, chap. i.

and he was ever on the alert to harden the queen against their solicitations. He was in consequence often bitterly inveighed against as a parsimonious and narrow-minded minister, and even threatened with the vengeance of the disappointed seekers for wealth or preferment; but, strong in the consciousness of his own rectitude he despised their clamours, and pursued the same maxims with which he had commenced during the whole of his long and successful ministry. But while thus hostile to irregular and unmerited gratuities, Cecil was a punctual and liberal rewarder of real services. It was by his advice that the common soldiers were first clothed at the expense of government, and received their weekly allowances directly into their own hands, instead of, as formerly, through the medium of their officers.

Another task which this indefatigable minister took upon himself, was that of answering all publications hostile to the queen's government. His political writings evince a fair, open, and liberal spirit, and contributed much, it is said, to retain the people in their allegiance, during the frequent partial insurrections which succeeded Norfolk's first conspiracy. The Jesuitical libellers of the day had also their full share of notice from the secretary's pen, as his voluminous apologies still extant testify.

2

Cecil was raised to the office of lord-high-treasurer in 1572, being the eleventh year of his administration. Under his management the receipts of the treasury increased rapidly, while the mode of levying the taxes was more equalized, and the general burden made to sit lighter on the people. It was an excellent saying of his, that "he never cared to see the treasury swell like a disordered spleen when the other parts of the constitution were in a consumption." It was an invariable rule of his never to issue the smallest payment without an express order from the queen; and as he never would borrow from the exchequer for his own private purposes, he was almost the only one of Elizabeth's ministers, who, at his death, owed nothing to the public. The same consideration which suggested these economical courses to Elizabeth's great minister, prompted him also to a pacific line of foreign policy. "War," he used to say, "is soon kindled, but peace very hardly procured. War is the curse and peace the blessing of God upon a nation. A realm gains more by one year's peace than by ten years' war." Guided by these maxims he maintained England in a state of tranquillity, while the continental states and Scotland were involved in wars and intestine convulsions. We have already, in different memoirs, adverted to the many difficulties with which Cecil was occasionally called to contend in his system of foreign policy. Surrounded by high and gallant spirits who thirsted for the achievements of the field and the renown of martial enterprise, it was no easy task for him, even aided by his prudent sovereign, to save the nation from being plunged into wars which, however redolent of military glory, would have redounded little to the ultimate welfare and the social security of the country at large. Yet he succeeded in the difficult task, and throughout the struggle which the Low Countries maintained with the bigoted Philip, and the civil wars of France, England pursued a line of policy at once pacific and dexterous, which, while it sufficiently vindicated the

2

Many of them still remain in manuscript, but Strype has published several of them.

national honour, effectually prevented a collision betwixt the catholic and protestant parties at home, and, perhaps in the main, proved as beneficial to the oppressed protestant party abroad as the more active and decided interference of England in their behalf could have done. We have dwelt at some length on Elizabeth's policy towards Scotland in other memoirs. It is very difficult to determine how much of Elizabeth's conduct towards the unfortunate Mary was dictated by personal jealousy,-how much by the advice of Cecil and other ministers. Cecil certainly regarded Mary as the most dangerous enemy of his sovereign and the protestant religion, and considered her liberty as incompatible with the safety of either. The partisans of Norfolk also esteemed him the main cause of their leader's death. Elizabeth, with that selfishness which always marked her character, did not hesitate to attempt to shift the odium of both Mary's and Norfolk's execution from herself to Cecil. But still there is no historical evidence of his having laboured to accomplish the death of either of these personages with greater assiduity than his other colleagues in office; and Elizabeth's subsequent conduct sufficiently evinces how unshaken was the confidence she reposed in her favourite minister, notwithstanding all that she affected to believe against him. We have seen how resolutely she interfered to rescue him from Leicester's intrigue for his fall; and on many other occasions she gave evidence that her favourite minister was no more to be impeached by others with impunity than herself. Yet Cecil's rewards were by no means extraordinary. The highest title he ever obtained was that of baron; and his official promotions were always of a kind which brought additional business along with them.

To perform the various duties of the different situations occupied by this statesman required no common talents and no ordinary industry, and nothing was more remarkable in Lord Burleigh than his unremitting diligence. His occupations were manifold, but by steadily adhering to his favourite maxim, that "the shortest way to do many things is to do one thing at once," he got through his duties in a satisfactory manner, without either hurry or confusion. One of his contemporaries has declared that during a period of twenty-four years he never saw him idle for half an hour together. Even when labouring under severe pain from gout, he would make himself be carried to his office for the despatch of business. In his court-like one of our own times whom it is not necessary for us here to name-he is said to have expedited more causes in one term than his predecessors had been accustomed to get through in a twelvemonth; and notwithstanding the multiplicity of business which pressed upon him, no one could ever say of him that he had disregarded a reasonable application for law, justice, or advice in any matter. To have witnessed the minuteness and accuracy of his arrangements for the discharge of his judicial duties, one would have supposed him entirely devoted to these, and to domestic policy; but he was equally indefatigable in foreign affairs,-no plot escaped his vigilance, whether hatched in the Spanish cabinet or in the chamber of the king of France,—the movements of England's enemies were known to him as soon as concerted, and yet he himself remained impenetrable to the numerous and dexterous spies which surrounded him. There is little doubt that he employed a more extensive system of espionage thau is accordant with more modern views of political integrity; but the spirit

and circumstances of the times rendered something of the kind almost indispensable to the minister who desired to be early and accurately informed of the state of parties within his circle of operations.

In his own domestic economy, Burleigh, with all his simple personal habits, was magnificent even to profusion. The state of society at the time demanded this. Yet he not only died unencumbered with debt, but left, besides £11,000 in money, £4,000 a year in lands to his heirs.

Burleigh remained in office for a period almost unexampled in the history of courts. Yet he was by no means avaricious of power, and ambition seems never to have been once awakened in his breast. He aimed at doing his duty in the successive stations to which he was raised without solicitation on his part-and his notions of duty, it must be granted, were of no extraordinary kind-but beyond this he attempted nothing more. He was in fact a lover of retirement, and derived little personal satisfaction from the glitter and bustle of a court. Within a very few years after the accession of Elizabeth, we find him expressing a desire to quit a station in which he enjoyed so little repose; and at different times he solicited the queen with unaffected earnestness to accept of his resignation. But Elizabeth knew his worth too well to part with him easily, and even did not hesitate to descend from the stateliness of royalty, and indulge in such playful familiarities with her minister, as attached him more strongly to her person, and made him for a season abandon his views of retirement.

In private life, Burleigh was simple and domestic. He delighted in the society of his family; and in his wife, the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, he possessed during their union of forty-three years, a companion every way fitted to enhance the sweets of domestic life to him. At his own table he was often jocose and sportive, and gave himself up to a moderate but genial hilarity; but conversation, in which he excelled, was the chief pleasure he enjoyed at the festive board, for he ate and drank sparingly. The principal scene of his amusements was his seat at Theobald's near London. Here he used to retire as often as he could snatch an interval of leisure from his public duties, and would amuse and recreate himself by riding up and down the walks on his mule and overlooking the sports of his young retainers; but he never joined in any diversions himself. His piety was unostentatious and sincere; and he used to say that he trusted no man who was not religious, "for he that is false to God can never be true to man."

This able and politic minister died on the 4th of August, 1598, in the 78th year of his age. His royal mistress visited him on his deathbed, and his power passed with little diminution to a son who inherited his abilities. His life has furnished a theme for several pens, and has been recently expanded into three large quarto volumes, by Dr Nares, regius professor of modern history in the university of Oxford.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

BORN A. D. 1567.-DIED A. D. 1601.

THIS nobleman, whose fortunes are so intimately blended with the military and personal history of Queen Elizabeth, was born as Nether

wood, Herts, in 1567. His father was Walter, earl of Essex, who had been advanced by that princess to the earldom, and the order of the Garter. His mother was a daughter of Sir Francis Knollys, and a cousin of the queen. The youth, at his father's death, being but ten years of age, his affairs were managed by an agent of Burleigh's of the name of Edward Waterhouse, who, in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Sidney shortly after the death of Essex, represents the son as favoured and supported by the queen and nobles. The earl was educated, under Dr Whitgift, at Trinity college, Cambridge; and, although at an earlier period of his life, he had appeared to be slow in scholarship, he distinguished himself at that university, and took the degree of master of arts in 1582. Leaving college, he retired to a residence at Lambsie, in Wales; but, in 1584, when in the seventeenth year of his age, was introduced at court. Having attended his relative, the earl of Leicester, to Holland, in 1586, he fought at the battle of Zutphen, memorable for the death of Sir Philip Sidney, between whom and a sister of Essex it had been proposed that a marriage should be formed. The young earl distinguished himself upon this occasion, and was created a knightbanneret. In 1587, he succeeded Leicester as master of the horse; and, in the course of the active preparations which were made against Spain, when, in 1588, that country threatened the invasion of England, he was made general of the horse, besides being invested with the order of the garter. On the death of Leicester, in the same year, he became head of the party at court which had been led by that unworthy favourite, of whom he seemed also to prove the successor in the affections of Elizabeth. Of this attachment, his chivalrous character, as well as his beautiful person, may have been in some degree the cause -but, on one occasion, the very ardour of his chivalry seems to have lost him the favour of the queen. For, in 1589, he left the court without her permission, and attached himself to an expedition against Portugal, undertaken by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris-on which she forthwith despatched the earl of Huntingdon with an injunction for his return. But he had sailed from Plymouth before Huntingdon's arrival, and, in ignorance of her wish, or in disobedience to her order, he continued in his enterprise., Having reached Portugal, he served in that country as a volunteer, and, at Lisbon, challenged the governor, or any other of like rank, to single combat. He was commended for his gallantry in this campaign, and received forgiveness of the queen.

The office of Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary of state, becoming vacant, by his death in 1590, Essex endeavoured to secure it for Davison, who, by the part he took in the execution of the queen of Scots, had forfeited the royal favour. Lord Burleigh, on the other hand, sought the office for his son, Robert Cecil, and this is given as the first occasion on which decided evidences of mutual opposition between the family of Cecil and the earl appear. It seems probable, however, that real friendship for Davison dictated the exertions which Essex made in his behalf, as recorded in his correspondence with that unfortunate man between the years 1587 and 1590. In his suit to Elizabeth, Essex proved unsuccessful, and, in 1590, he himself fell under her displeasure by privately marrying the widow of Sir Philip Sidney. In the following year, however, when the queen was