Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/95

 WILLIAM, LORD BURGHLEY 75

He has defined his own principle in dealing with the Queen, where they differed on points of policy, in a letter to Sir Robert l :

" I do hold, and will always, this course in such matters as I differ in opinion from her Majesty as long as I may be allowed to give advice, I will not change my opinion by affirming the contrary. For that were to offend God, to whom I am sworn first. But, as a servant, I will obey her Majesty's commandment, and no wise contrary the same. Presuming that she, being God's chief minister here, it shall be God's will to have her commandments obeyed ; after that I have performed my duty as a counseller ; and shall in my heart wish her commandments to have good success, as, I am sure, she intendeth. You see I am in a mixture of divinity and policy. Preferring in policy her Majesty above all others on the earth ; and in divinity, the King of Heaven above all betwixt Alpha and Omega."

In the end, fortunately for England, his policy prevailed. ' Vain as Elizabeth was of her own sagacity," says Froude, " she never modified a course recommended to her by Burghley without injury both to the realm and to herself. She never chose an opposite course without plunging into embarrassments from which his skill and Walsingham's were barely able to extricate her. The great results of her reign were the fruits of a policy which was not her own, and which she starved and mutilated when energy and complete- ness were needed." Finally, then, the wonderful results of the reign of Elizabeth, on which the material and spiritual progress of the country

1 March i^ih, 1596 (Hatfield MSS.).

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