And, As There Was In Nature A Kind Of Backwardness, Which Did Not
Befriend Him, Nor Suit With The Motion
Of the court, so there was in
him an inclination to arms, with a humour of travelling and gadding
abroad,
Which had not some wise men about him laboured to remove,
and the Queen laid in her command, he would, out of his own native
propension, marred his own market; for as he was grown by reading,
whereunto he was much addicted, to the theory of a soldier, so was
he strongly invited by his genius, to the acquaintance of the
practice of the war, which were the causes of his excursions, for he
had a company in the Low Countries, from whom he came over with a
noble acceptance of the Queen; but, somewhat restless in honourable
thoughts, he exposed himself again and again, and would press the
Queen with pretences of visiting his company so often, till at
length he had a flat denial; yet he struck over with Sir John Norris
into the action of Britanny, which was then a hot and active war,
whom he would always call his father, honouring him above all men,
and ever bewailing his end; so contrary he was in his esteem and
valuation of this great commander to that of his friend, my Lord of
Essex; till at last the Queen began to take his digressions for
contempt, and confined his residence to the court, {66} and her own
presence; and, upon my Lord of Essex's fall, so confident she was of
her own princely judgment, and the opinion she had conceived of his
worth and conduct, that she would have this noble gentleman and none
other to bring in the Irish wars to a propitious end; for it was a
prophetical speech of her own, that it would be his fortune and his
honour to cut the thread of that fatal rebellion, and to bring her
in peace to the grave; wherein she was not deceived: for he
achieved it, but with much pains and carefulness, and not without
the forces and many jealousies of the court and times, wherewith the
Queen's age and the malignity of her settling times were replete.
And so I come to his dear friend in court, Secretary Cecil, whom, in
his long absence, he adored as his saint, and counted him his only
MECENAS, both before and after his departure from court, and during
all the time of his command in Ireland; well knowing that it lay in
his power, and by a word of his mouth, to make or mar him.
ROBERT CECIL.
Sir Robert Cecil, since Earl of Salisbury, was the son of the Lord
Burleigh, and, by degrees, successor of his places and favours,
though not of his lands; for he had Sir Thomas Cecil, his elder
brother, since created Earl of Exeter; he was first Secretary of
State, then Master of the Court of Wards, and, in the last of her
reign, came to be Lord Treasurer:
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