Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/250

 216 THE CECILS

sound common sense, and his unwearied industry, made him invaluable to the King, at least during the first few years of his reign.

Even Sir Anthony Welldon, who retails all the scurrilous gossip of the day, is bound to admit his fine qualities :

" The little great Secretary," he says, " died of a most loathsome disease, and remarkable, without house, with- out pity, without favour of that master that had raised him to so high an estate ; and yet must he have that right done him ... he had great parts, was very wise, full of honour and bounty, a great lover and rewarder of virtue and able parts in others, so they did not appear too high in place, or look too narrowly into his actions." l

" He was plentiful in alms, charity, and good works," says Sir Walter Cope ; " full of honour and honest to his friends and no malicious persecutor of his enemies. He loved justice as his life, and the laws as his inheritance."

One instance of his " good works " may be given. In December, 1608, he made an agree- ment with one Morrall of Enfield, who engaged, in consideration of a salary of 100 a year and a house rent free, to teach fifty poor persons " to be chosen by the Earl within the parish of Hat- field, in the art of clothing, weaving, spinning, carding, or any other suchlike commendable trade."

Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that Salisbury " never cared for any man longer

1 " Court and Character of King James," in Secret History of the Court of James I., I. 324. The contemporary stories of the nature of his disease are refuted by the reports of his doctor.

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