I come now to the next, which was Secretary William Cecil, for on the
death of the old Marquis of Winchester he came up in his room: a person
of a most subtle and active spirit.
He stood not by the way of constellation, but was wholly attentive to the
service of his mistress, and his dexterity, experience, and merit therein
challenged a room in the Queen’s favour which eclipsed the other’s
over-seeming greatness, and made it appear that there were others steered
and stood at the helm besides himself, and more stars in the firmament of
grace than Ursa Major.
He was born, as they say, in Lincolnshire, but, as some aver upon
knowledge, of a younger brother of the Cecils of Hertfordshire, a family
of my own knowledge, though now private, yet of no mean antiquity, who,
being exposed, and sent to the City, as poor gentlemen used to do their
sons, became to be a rich man on London Bridge, and purchased {130a} in
Lincolnshire, where this man was born.
He was sent to Cambridge, and then to the Inns of Court, and so came to
serve the Duke of Somerset in the time of his Protectorship {130b} as
Secretary, and having a pregnancy to high inclinations, he came by
degrees to a higher conversation with the chiefest affairs of State and
Councils; but, on the fall of the duke, he stood some years in umbrage
and without employment, till the State found they needed his abilities;
and although we find not that he was taken into any place during Mary’s
reign, unless (as some say) towards the last, yet the Council several
times made use of him, and in the Queen’s {131a} entrance he was admitted
Secretary of State; afterwards he was made Master of the Court of Wards,
then Lord Treasurer, for he was a person of most excellent abilities;
and, indeed, the Queen began to need and seek out men of both guards, and
so I conclude to rank this {131b} great instrument amongst the _Togati_,
for he had not to do with the sword, more than as the great paymaster and
contriver of the war which shortly followed, wherein he accomplished
much, through his theoretical knowledge at home and his intelligence
abroad, by unlocking of the counsels of the Queen’s enemies.
We must now take it, and that of truth, into observation that, until the
tenth of her reign, the times were calm and serene, though sometimes
overcast, as the most glorious sun-rising is subject to shadowings and
droppings, for the clouds of Spain, and the vapours of the Holy League,
began to disperse and threaten her felicity. Moreover, she was then to
provide for some intestine strangers, which began to gather in the heart
of her kingdom, all which had relation and correspondency, each one to
the other, to dethrone her and to disturb the public tranquillity, and
therewithal, as a principal mark, the Established religion, for the name
of Recusant then began first to be known to the world; until then the
Catholics were no more than Church-Papists, {132} but now, commanded by
the Pope’s express Catholic Church, their mother, they separate
themselves; so it seems the Pope had then his aims to take a true number
of his children; but the Queen had the greater advantage, for she
likewise took tale of her opposite subjects, their strength and how many
they were, that had given their names to Baal, who {133} then by the
hands of some of his proselytes fixed his bulls on the gates of St.
Paul’s, which discharged her subjects of all fidelity and received faith,
and so, under the veil of the next successor, to replant the Catholic
religion. So that the Queen had then a new task and work in hand that
might well awake her best providence, and required a muster of new arms,
as well as courtships and counsels, for the time then began to grow quick
and active, fitter for stronger motions than them of the carpet and
measure; and it will be a true note of her magnanimity that she loved a
soldier, and had a propensity in her nature to regard and always to grace
them, which the Court, taking it into their consideration, took it as an
inviting to win honour, together with Her Majesty’s favour, by exposing
themselves to the wars, especially when the Queen and the affairs of the
kingdom stood in some necessity of the soldiers, for we have many
instances of the sallies of the nobility and gentry; yea, and of the
Court and her privy favourites, that had any touch or tincture of Mars in
their inclinations, to steal away without licence and the Queen’s
privity, which had like to cost some of them dear, so predominant were
their thoughts and hopes of honour grown in them, as we may truly observe
in the exposition of Sir Philip Sidney, my Lord of Essex and Mountjoy,
and divers others, whose absence, and the manner of their eruptions, was
very distasteful unto her, whereof I can hereunto add a true and no
impertinent story, and that of the last: Mountjoy, who, having twice or
thrice stole away into Brittany, where, under Sit John Norris, he had
then a company, without the Queen’s leave and privity, she sent a message
unto him with a strict charge to the general to see him sent home.
When he came into the Queen’s presence, she fell into a kind railing,
demanding of him how he durst go over without her leave. “Serve me so,”
quoth she, “once more, and I will lay you fast enough for running; you
will never leave till you are knocked on the head, as that inconsiderate
fellow Sidney was; you shall go when I send. In the meantime, see that
you lodge in the Court” (which was then at Whitehall), “where you may
follow your book, read, and discourse of the wars.” But to our purpose.
It fell out happily to those, and, as I may say, to these times, that the
Queen during the calm time of her reign was not idle, nor rocked asleep
with security, for she had been very provident in the reparation and
augmentation of her shipping and ammunition, and I know not whether by a
foresight of policy, or any instinct, it came about, or whether it was an
act of her compassion, but it is most certain she sent no small troops to
the revolted States of Holland, before she had received any affront from
the King of Spain, that might deserve to tend to a breach of hostility,
which the Papists maintain to this day was the provocation to the
after-wars; but, omitting what might be said to this point, these
Netherland wars were the Queen’s seminaries or nursery of very many brave
soldiers, and so likewise were the civil wars of France, whither she sent
five several armies.
They were the French scholars that inured the youth and gentry of the
kingdom, and it was a militia, where they were daily in acquaintance with
the discipline of the Spaniards, who were then turned the Queen’s
inveterate enemies.
And thus have I taken in observation her _dies Halcyonii_—_i.e._, these
years of hers which were more serene and quiet than those that followed,
which, though they were not less propitious, as being touched more with
the points of honour and victory, yet were they troubled and loaded ever,
both with domestic and foreign machinations; and, as it is already
quoted, they were such as awakened her spirits and made her cast about
her to defend rather by offending, and by way of provision to prevent all
invasions, than to expect them, which was a piece of the cunning of the
times; and with this I have noted the causes and _principium_ {136} of
the wars following, and likewise points to the seed-plots from whence she
took up these brave men and plants of honour who acted on the theatre of
Mars, and on whom she dispersed the rays of her grace; who were persons,
in their kinds of care, virtuous, and such as might, out of their merit,
pretend interest to her favours, of which rank the number will equal, if
not exceed, that of her gown-men, in recount of whom I will proceed with
Sir Philip Sidney.