: The Great Lord Burghley: A study in Elizabethan statecraft by Hume Martin A S Martin Andrew Sharp - Great Britain History Elizabeth 1558-1603; Statesmen Great Britain Biography; Burghley William Cecil Baron 1520-1598; Elizabeth I Queen of England 1533-1603

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THE GREAT LORD BURGHLEY

THE GREAT LORD BURGHLEY

A STUDY IN ELIZABETHAN STATECRAFT BY

MARTIN A. S. HUME

London JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET 1898

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press

TO THE MOST HONOURABLE

THIS ATTEMPT AT A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS ANCESTOR, THE PRIME MINISTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH,

MARTIN A. S. HUME.

INTRODUCTION

For nearly half a century William Cecil, Lord Burghley, exercised greater influence over the future fortunes of England than ever fell to the share of a statesman before or since. It was a period when Mediaeval Europe was in the melting-pot, from which, in due season, some of her peoples were to arise bright and shining, with fresh faiths, higher ideals, and nobler aspirations, to start on a new career of civilisation; whilst others were still to cling a while longer to the garb of dross which remained of the old order, and was to hamper them in the times to come.

How England should emerge from the welter of the old tides and the new, depended to some extent upon providential circumstances, but more largely still upon the personal characteristics of those who guided her national policy and that of her competitors. Never was nation more favoured in this respect than was England at this crisis of the world's history. The conditions of the Queen's birth compelled her to embrace the cause of religious freedom, whilst her intellect, her sex, and her versatility enabled her during a long course of years successfully to play off one continental rival against another, until she was strong enough openly to grasp and hold the balance. But withal, her vanity, her fickleness, the folly and greed of her favourites, or the machinations of her enemies, would inevitably have dragged her to ruin again and again, but for the fact that she always had near her, in moments of weakness or danger, a fixed point to which she could turn, a councillor whose gaze was never diverted from the ultimate goal, a man whom flattery did not move, whom bribery did not buy--wise, steady William Cecil, who, to her honour and his, remained her prime adviser from the moment of her accession to the day of his death.

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