Part 18

To establish orderly government at home, to settle a religious _modus vivendi_, to avoid war, and to prevent the succession of Mary Stewart or any pronounced Catholic--these were the main aims on which Elizabeth and her two great ministers were united. Of the three, Walsingham--a Puritan--was the least devoted to the Peace policy, Elizabeth the most determined on that policy; yet it was Elizabeth who habitually endangered it. The Queen’s tortuous methods, pursued in defiance of her counsellors, more than once seemed to have brought her to a point where war was inevitable; yet time after time her ingenuity, or her lucky star, or a return just in time to Cecil’s guidance, saved the situation. Never has a sovereign been better served; never has there been a reign in which rulers and ruled worked in more essential concord. Idealism and common sense were united in the conduct of affairs with a completeness which has rarely, if ever, been paralleled--never have the toils of the men of counsel and the men of action been more effectively combined. And England was peculiarly fortunate in this--that the great antagonist whom finally she fought and overthrew could be thoroughly relied on always to miss the opportunity for which he was always waiting, always to move only when the moment had passed irrevocably. So England was the victor in the great duel; and the Stewarts found her might established on a basis so firm that even they were unable to pull it down.

That result was not due to any one mind--to any single guide. Elizabeth, her ministers, her seamen, and her people, all contributed their share; and the work was crowned by the glory of her poets. Burghley may not have been personally a statesman of the highest rank, though if he is not included in that category it is a little difficult to name any Englishman who is entitled to that honour. There is a certain commonplace, _bourgeois_ touch about him; he stands for the common sense, not the idealist, side, in the combination which made England great. His virtues were those of the successful pursuers of the _via media_. He did not organise revolution: he did not dream of an empire on which the sun should never set. But he played the political game with unfailing loyalty to his sovereign and his country, with level-headed shrewdness, with imperturbable resolution. There are few men to whom England owes so much; and if there be those to whom she owes more, their deeds but for him would yet have been impossible.

II

CECIL UNDER EDWARD VI. AND MARY

In the reign of Henry VII., Richard Sitsilt, affirmed by tradition to be of an ancient Welsh family long established among the gentry of the Marches, owned broad acres in the counties of Monmouth and Herefordshire. One of his sons, David, who elected to modify his name into Cecil, transferred himself to Lincolnshire, where he prospered greatly. He and his son Richard became very large landed proprietors, and held a variety of offices connected with the Court under Henry VIII. So it would appear that the present Marquess of Salisbury is not unconnected by descent with the “Celtic fringe.” It must be admitted, however, that the notable qualities of his great ancestor are not those usually associated with what is supposed to be the Celtic temperament. Still in that connexion a rather curious point may be touched on. A critic has recently remarked that there is a type of statesmanship which we are in the habit of regarding as peculiarly English (_à propos_ of l’Hôpital), naming in a brief list both Burghley and Cromwell--Oliver, apparently, not Thomas. Now Oliver was descended from the sister of Thomas, whose husband was a Welshman, and whose son chose to adopt the maternal patronymic instead of his father’s name, which was Williams. So Wales has some title to claim the Tudors, the Cecils, and the great Oliver among her contributions to “English” celebrities.

William Cecil was born in 1520, and when in due course he went to Cambridge, he became a member of a distinguished group of scholars which included Roger Ascham, afterwards tutor of Lady Jane Grey and of Elizabeth; John Cheke, who became the tutor of Edward VI., and whose sister was Cecil’s first wife; and Nicholas Bacon, who married the sister of Cecil’s second wife. William Cecil married Mary Cheke in 1541: she died in less than two years, after bearing him one son, Thomas, afterwards Lord Exeter. Nearly three years later he married Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, the “governor” of Prince Edward--a young lady of portentous learning, whose name Roger Ascham coupled with that of Jane Grey. Thus Cecil himself was not only well versed in the most progressive learning of his time, but his chosen associates, including both the first and the second wife, were all distinguished for erudition--and all, it may be remarked, tinged with the “New Learning” in the specific ecclesiastical sense of the term.

Before the death of Henry VIII. the young man was already the recipient of Court favour, and in the good graces of the Earl of Hertford, to whose personal service we find him definitely attached in the early days of the Protectorship. He accompanied the Protector on his Scottish invasion, was present at Pinkie, and was made Somerset’s secretary about a year later. His assiduity and his immense capacity for mastering laborious detail must have been of infinite value to his chief, whose woeful lack of practicality must, on the other hand, have intensified his secretary’s inborn tendency to rate common sense in method a long way higher than visionary idealism of aim. All his life long, nothing ever induced Cecil to deviate from safe precedent and respectable courses--bold enough, when his foresight satisfied him that boldness was the better part of prudence, but never rash. Every step was always carefully calculated, and a path for retreat kept open if there was the remotest risk of retreat being necessary. In the service of the most impulsive and sentimental of statesmen, he learnt--if he needed to learn--never to act upon sentiment or impulse.

When Somerset fell in 1549 Cecil was still some way short of thirty; but he had an old head on his young shoulders--and he had every intention of keeping it there. He had no personal devotion to Somerset or to his policy, and had carefully avoided quarrelling with anybody. When he perceived that the ship was scuttled, he had no compunction about making sure of leaving it in a decent and orderly manner before it sank. He did not quite desert; he remained with the Protector in the discharge of his duties, while very nearly every one else was making a parade of sympathy with the cabal who obviously held the winning cards; but he remained there in careful obscurity--the personal secretary, not the partisan. He did not escape a brief imprisonment in the Tower; no doubt he had counted on that. But Warwick was perfectly aware of his power of making himself useful, and saw no possible reason why he should not avail himself thereof--nor did Cecil. Competent officials were few, and of these some had already put themselves out of court, in Warwick’s eyes, either by having supported Somerset too boldly or by displaying doubtful religious leanings. The former secretary of Somerset had not made himself obnoxious in any quarter; and in the following September (1550) he emerged again into public life in a more responsible position than before, as Secretary of State.

The political waters were, to say the least, unquiet; there was no telling when squalls might be coming. Personal intrigues were rife. Cecil had no ambition to grasp the tiller under these conditions. He was ready to give advice to the best of his ability; he was ready to carry out instructions, whether they accorded with his advice or not; but he was not disposed to give orders on his own account--his ambition was not of the vaulting sort. His business was to keep his own footing, whether others did so or no; he would take no risks unless his own life were endangered by refusing them--every man must take care of himself. If Warwick chose to insist on a policy which the secretary disapproved--alliance with France abroad, or debasement of coinage at home--that was Warwick’s business, not the secretary’s: what he had to do was to carry out the policy imposed on him, with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of friction, without allowing himself to be identified with the policy or with antagonism to it.

So when Warwick made up his mind that Somerset must be finally removed, it was Cecil’s cue to avoid, so far as he could, taking an active part in so ungracious a business as his old patron’s destruction--but certainly not to invite destruction for himself by injudicious partisanship. He did not scruple even to give Warwick information injurious to Somerset; though it was probably only because he knew it would reach that cunning schemer’s ears sooner or later--and when it came to a choice between profiting or suffering by the inevitable, he had no qualms about profiting. Still, he managed to be too much occupied with foreign negotiations to have much to do with the Somerset affair. As for the foreign negotiations themselves, he did not make any attempt to counteract the policy which, against his own judgment, he was called upon to carry out, but he was very seriously and not unsuccessfully engaged in minimising the untoward consequences which he foresaw.

As the young king’s death drew manifestly near, the intrigues of Northumberland, as Warwick had now become, thickened. Sir William--he had been knighted at the end of 1551--did not like intrigues; but in spite of seasonable illness, which may have been genuine, he could not altogether avoid being dragged in, and was obliged--like all the rest of the Council--to append his signature to the document nominating Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. He averred afterwards that he signed only as a witness--a statement more ingenious than ingenuous. Still, he took care that there should be evidence from unofficial quarters that he would have avoided signing if he could, and that so far as he was formally a participator in Northumberland’s plot it was with no goodwill to its success--which, indeed, was the attitude of several other signatories, who did their best to upset the scheme the moment they felt safe in doing so. Cranmer, however, the most reluctant of any of them, had no such double-dealing in his mind, and made no attempt to evade the responsibility when he had once assumed it, though he had been tricked into acquiescence by a lie.

It is only fair, in judging Cecil’s conduct through these years, to remember that he was only in his twenty-seventh year when Somerset became Protector, and in his thirty-third year when Queen Mary succeeded. Warwick made him Secretary of State eight days before his thirtieth birthday. Of course, if the errors he committed had been errors of youth, he would have won easy forgiveness; yet in some respects his excessive caution may reasonably be attributed to his youth. He had every excuse for arguing that a real control must be out of his reach for many years, and that till it came within his reach he was not called upon to insist on his own views. In those days the servants of the State did not resign--the remark has been made before--they carried out the policy imposed on them from above. He was content, therefore, to bide his time, and for the present to do the political drudgery for Somerset or Northumberland, while he avoided committing himself personally to anybody or anything. This course was not one which permitted the exercise of generosity or magnanimity; it completely eschewed the idea of self-sacrifice; but it was a course which he could and did pursue without ever fairly laying himself open to the charge of treachery, or incurring the faintest suspicion of what is called corruption. If he was guided by considerations of personal advantage, it was not in the sense that any one could bid successfully for his support.

So when Northumberland’s plot collapsed ignominiously, Cecil, although a Protestant and officially opposed to Gardiner, had no difficulty in making his peace with the new Government. Only, the political seas being stormier than ever, he had no inclination either to head an Opposition or to take a prominent place among the queen’s ministers. He was too much of a Protestant for that, though not too much so to conform and “bow himself in the House of Rimmon.” In short, he courted an obscurity from which the Government had no desire to extract him--though it is probable that if he had chosen to offer himself as an instrument for Mary’s use, she would have availed herself of him readily enough. But it was one thing to pass from Somerset’s employ to Warwick’s, and another to pass from Northumberland’s to Mary’s. Besides, by keeping in the background now he could quietly establish himself in the confidence of the probable successor to the throne, the Princess Elizabeth. Being a member of the Parliament of 1556, he therein openly opposed sundry Government measures which were hotly resisted by the House of Commons, but even then he behaved with circumspection and did not suffer for his conduct. His real business was with Elizabeth; and when the crisis came, and Mary died, the members of the Council who hastened to Hatfield found Cecil already installed as her Prime Minister elect, with the scheme for carrying on the Government completely organised.

III

FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION

Sir William had bided his time, and that time had arrived. On the throne was a young woman of five-and-twenty, who had already shown a skill akin to Cecil’s own in the avoidance of fatally compromising words or acts under circumstances when the utmost wariness had been the constant condition of safety. She had maintained her Protestantism in precisely the same way and in very much the same degree as he had done; moreover, she was bound for her own sake to maintain it, since her personal claim to legitimate birth was bound up with the rejection of Papal authority. Cecil had received her confidence, it may be, in part, because she was aware that she could afford to indulge her own waywardness more freely while she had so eminently safe a counsellor as a stand-by. He, for his part, was doubtless fully satisfied that she had intelligence enough to recognise that he was indispensable to her, and that in the main their views of policy would harmonise. The young man had held aloof from intrigues and had declined all temptations to grasp at dangerous power, not from lack of ambition or of patriotism, but because the power would have been too dearly bought and its foundations too unstable. Now, while he was still in the prime of life, yet of ripe experience, power lay ready for him to grasp--power to guide England in the courses which he believed would serve her best interests; power to cure the evils from which she had been suffering for many a year past; power to avert those which menaced her in the future; power which, once achieved, he was not likely to lose unless by his own blundering. He knew his own capacity. To refuse power under such conditions would have been not caution but pusillanimity.

It may be that the account of Cecil’s public life during the reigns of Edward and Mary gives an impression merely that he was an exceedingly astute young man with no principles to speak of. If so, that view must be corrected. He valued himself on his own complete integrity, and would have done nothing which he recognised as inconsistent therewith. He had principles, but not enthusiasms. In politics, as in religion, he had his own opinions, but in both he admitted a very large body of _adiaphora_, things which were not questions of principle, though regarded as such by persons afflicted with enthusiasms. On all such matters, passive or even active conformity to the policy of _de facto_ rulers was permissible. He was ready to go to Mass, but not to take a part in the suppression of Protestantism. He would assent to Northumberland’s plot, but he would not further it. His integrity drew a line--lower than a person of finer moral susceptibilities would have drawn it, but with sufficient firmness and decision, and higher than most of his more prominent contemporaries. He did not feel called upon to swim against a stream which would overwhelm him if he did so; but he made for a backwater. It is often difficult to judge when and where courage becomes rashness, and prudence cowardice. On the whole, he was more inclined to be too prudent than too bold; but it was not because he lacked courage. His conduct might on occasion, though rarely, be charged as disloyal; it could never fairly be called treacherous. He was convinced that as a general rule honesty is the best policy, and justice is the best policy; but in the exceptional cases where he thought they were not, he chose--the best policy. The principles of his mistress were the same; but she deviated from the mean of resolute caution more markedly and more erratically than her minister; she was more readily rash and more easily frightened; her criterion of justice was lax, and her sense of honesty very nearly non-existent.

There was this very important difference between the state of affairs on Queen Elizabeth’s accession and their position between 1546 and 1558. Hitherto a statesman, even if perfectly secure of power, would still have had a difficult course to steer; but security being wanting, the lack of it was the gravest of all the difficulties. The course of safety now was not less intricate; but, in spite of appearances, there was no longer the same risk of incalculable irregular forces wrecking the ship. To retain a useful illustration or analogy; it was one thing to be responsible for bringing the ship home “through billows and through gales,” and another to carry her through a narrow and devious channel infested with reefs and sandbanks, in fair weather. The pilot who judged that he knew every inch of the reefs and sandbanks might feel that the business was an anxious one; to the less discerning passenger, he would often seem to be heading his vessel straight for the rocks; but the pilot himself would not feel any fear of finding himself helpless. As long as he made no mistakes he would be safe; and if he made mistakes, it would be his own fault.

After the event, when the developments of a particular situation have taken place, it is always difficult to realise the aspect the situation itself presented to the statesman who had to deal with it. Still, the attempt has to be made.

Almost from time immemorial until the reign of Henry VIII. antagonism between England and France was traditional; through great part of that period, alliance between England and the House of Burgundy had also been traditional, being largely based on the immense importance of the commercial intercourse between the Low Countries and England. During Henry VIII.’s reign, Wolsey and the king had broken away from the theory of animosity to France, but neither of them had held the Burgundian friendship cheap, and popular sentiment had lost very little of its anti-Gallic flavour. Further, we are apt not to bear in mind that, for forty years past, Spain, Burgundy, and the Empire had been combined under one head; the importance of Burgundy as a factor in the relations with Charles escapes our attention. More or less unconsciously, we think almost exclusively of France and the Empire; as in the coming period we think almost exclusively of France and Spain.

Now in 1558 the dominions of Charles V. were divided between his brother who became Emperor and his son who was lord of Spain and Burgundy. Philip, not the Emperor, is the rival of the French monarchy. The old grounds for seeking friendship with Philip as lord of Burgundy remain. The new reasons for hostility to Philip as King of Spain have not yet developed. The reigning Pope had been elected by French influence. The Council of Trent had not yet defined permanently the line of cleavage between so-called Catholics and Protestants; Philip had not assumed the position of the Church’s champion and the scourge of heretics; his influence in England was understood to have been exerted, so far as it was exercised at all, in mitigation of persecution.

On the other hand, antagonism between French and English interests was acute. England, drawn into a French war in Mary’s reign, had just lost her last foothold on French soil--Calais, which she had held for three hundred years; and though the loss might not be of great political or strategical consequence, its importance was magnified by popular sentiment. But apart from this: the young Queen of Scots had married the French Dauphin, only in this same year; and as a mere question of legitimacy, there was no possible doubt that her title to the throne of England was very much better than that of Elizabeth, who had been declared illegitimate by the English Courts of Justice, which judgment had never been formally reversed. The natural outcome of this marriage would be to bind France and Scotland together in all and more than all the intimacy of that ancient alliance between them which for three centuries had been a thorn in the side of English kings. Beyond that, the future Queen of France and Scotland would have a very much more tenable claim to the throne of England than ever an English king had had to the throne of France. Moreover, there was a special danger threatening under the existing circumstances. Mary was half a Guise by birth; her Guise mother was now Regent in Scotland; she was almost wholly Guise by breeding. The presumption was enormous that the ascendency of that powerful and ambitious family in France and their influence in Scotland would become more dominant than ever; the Guises were strongly anti-English, and it was the head of that house who had just achieved the galling triumph at Calais; while the fanatical Catholics looked to them as their leaders. A more active animosity, therefore, towards Protestantism was to be anticipated from France than from Spain.

The Spanish Minister in England, naturally enough under these conditions, took it for granted that the countenance of Philip was what the new Government would most urgently need--that he would merely have to speak and his instructions would be humbly obeyed. To his extreme astonishment, he discovered that nothing was further from Cecil’s mind. Cecil and his mistress signified quite clearly that they would judge for themselves whether they would take his advice or not. At any rate, they were going to do a good many things entirely regardless of their being in flat opposition to his wishes. The Spaniard declared to his master that Queen and Minister were rushing headlong to destruction; but they were doing nothing of the kind. What Cecil saw was that Philip could not at any price afford to withdraw his countenance from Elizabeth; because the only alternative to Elizabeth was Mary Stewart, and in that case Mary would unite the crowns of France, England, and Scotland. If France moved against England to the danger of Elizabeth’s throne, Philip would have no choice but to interfere on behalf of the Queen--she need not buy support which he could not afford to withhold. He might call the tune, but she need not dance to it unless it suited her.