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 Wotton, and the treaty of Edinburgh was signed on 6 July. The queen was angry at the concessions that had been made, and when Cecil returned to court he found that Dudley had gained ground and he himself had lost it. In September Amy Robsart came by her death. Dudley was in extreme perplexity, and applied to Cecil for counsel. His reply has perished. Soon the rumours spread that the queen was going to marry her early playmate, but gradually the reports lost credit. Cecil's star again rose. On 10 Jan. 1561 Cecil was appointed master of the court of wards. It was his first really lucrative office, and a very important one; but it was an office whereby a great deal of vexatious tyranny had been exercised upon the gentry for a long time. The court of wards was talked of with the same abhorrence and dread as the court of chancery was among ourselves thirty years ago. With characteristic energy Cecil applied himself to reform the abuses which were matters of common scandal, and at the same time he contrived to make the department a source of increased revenue to the crown. Nor was this all. The country was suffering severely from all the religious and social disturbances of the last fifteen years. The condition of the people needed to be looked into, for there was disorder everywhere. In July 1561 Cecil organised what we should now call a commission of inquiry into the discontent that prevailed. At this time he appears to have been considerably embarrassed, insomuch that he was compelled to sell his office of custos brevium, to lessen his establishment, and borrow money of Sir Thomas Gresham for his immediate necessities. The truth seems to be that his buildings at Burleigh, which had been going on for years, were carried on upon a scale which no ordinary income could support, and to this must be added the great demands which about this time were made upon him by his son Thomas, who occasioned him great anxiety and distress by his dissolute way of living while on his travels abroad.

In the parliament of 1563, where he sat for Northamptonshire, Cecil was chosen speaker, but declined the honour. The duties were hardly to be discharged along with those for which he was already responsible. One of the most important measures of the session was that which was intended to carry out the domestic policy which had been in Cecil's mind while he was formulating the inquiries circulated during the previous year. On 6 July 1564 Queen Elizabeth stood sponsor to Cecil's daughter Elizabeth, who became eventually the wife of William Wentworth, eldest son of Lord Wentworth of Nettlested. In August she paid her famous visit to Cambridge. Cecil had cause for uneasiness as to the reception the queen might receive. Party feeling ran very high in the university, and there had been unseemly disorders in some of the colleges, as well as a good deal of strong language and insubordination outside the college walls. Cecil, as chancellor of the university, felt that his own credit was at stake, and he took the precaution to go down to Cambridge before the queen started on her progress, to smooth the way for her reception. By his adroitness he brought it about that the Cambridge visit was one of the most successful entertainments of her long reign. The university, in recognition of Cecil's merits, created him M.A., and the townsmen presented him with some wonderful confectionery! In 1566 he was with the queen during her visit to Oxford, and there too he was created M.A.

The next three years were full of events which could not but have their effect upon the line of policy that Cecil found himself henceforth compelled to follow. The long and fierce struggle between the protestant and catholic party in Scotland ended at last in Mary Stuart's crossing the border and becoming a prisoner upon English soil in May 1568. New complications arose, and the great question of how to deal with the catholic party in England soon forced itself into prominence. In March 1569 Cecil drew up a most able paper upon the political situation (, p. 579), in which he shows clearly that he knew what was coming, and that he was no less completely master of the intrigues that were going on in Europe than he was of all that was passing at home. The great northern rebellion came upon him as no surprise; the attempt to crush him in the council (, ix. 441; Salisbury MSS. 1319, 1328) caused him no disturbance. The northern outbreak had collapsed before Christmas. The ferocity with which the deluded victims were treated must be laid to the queen's account, not to that of any of her ministers. One thing had made itself clear to Cecil—the northern rebellion had been a religious war, and the catholics in England were a far more powerful and far more dangerous party than queen and minister had hitherto allowed themselves to believe.

In February 1570 the bull of Pope Pius V excommunicating Elizabeth was published, and on 15 May a copy of it was nailed to the door of the bishop of London's palace. It was not only an insolent and wanton defiance,