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NARES'S MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1832.]

THE work of Doctor Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt, when first he landed in Brobdignag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface. The prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us, better than by saying, that it consists of about two thousand closely printed pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now threescore years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Doctor Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence.

Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour-the labour of thieves on the tread-mill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations-is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing of writers, is an Herodotus, or a Froissart, when compared with Doctor Nares. It is not merely in bulk, but in specific gravity also, that these memoirs exceed all other human compositions. On every subject which the professor discusses, he produces three times as many pages as another man; and one of his pages is as tedious as another man's three. His book is swelled to its vast dimensions by endless repetitions, by episodes which have nothing to do with the main action, by quotations from books which are in every circulating library, and by reflections which, when they happen to be just, are so obvious that they must necessarily occur to the mind of every reader. He employs more words in expounding and defending a truism, than any other writer would employ in supporting a pa

Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William Cecil Lord Burghley, Secretary of State in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, and Lord High Treasurer of England in the Reign of Queen Eliza beth. Containing an Historical View of the Times in which he lived, and of the many eminent and illustrious Persons with whom he was connected; with extracts from his Pri. vate and Official Correspondence and other Papers, now first Published from the Originals. By the Reverend EDWARD NARES, DD, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. 3 vols. 4to. London. 1828, 1832.

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radox. Of the rules of historical perspective he has not the faintest notion. There is neither foreground nor background in his delineation. The wars of Charles the Fifth in Germany are detailed at almost as much length as in Robertson's Life of that prince. The troubles of Scotland are related as fully as in M'Crie's Life of John Knox. It would be most unjust to deny that Doctor Nares is a man of great industry and research; but he is so utterly incompetent to arrange the materials which he has collected, that he might as well have left them in their original repositories.

Neither the facts which Doctor Nares has discovered, nor the arguments which he urges, will, we apprehend, materially alter the opinion generally entertained by judicious readers of history concerning his hero. Lord Burghley can hardly be called a great man. He was not one of those whose genius and energy change the fate of empires. He was by nature and habit one of those who follow, not one of those who lead. Nothing that is recorded, either of his words or of his actions, indicates intellectual or moral elevation. But his talents, though not brilliant, were of an eminently useful kind; and his principles, though not inflexible, were not more relaxed than those of his associates and competitors. He had a cool temper, a sound judgment, great powers of application, and a constant eye to the main chance. In his youth he was, it seems, fond of practical jokes. Yet even out of these he contrived to extract some pecuniary profit. When he was studying the law at Gray's Inn, he lost all his furniture and books to his companion at the gaming-table. He accordingly bored a hole in the wall which separated his chambers from those of his associate, and at midnight bellowed through his passage threats of damnation and calls to repentance in the ears of the victo rious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and refunded his winnings on his knees next day. "Many other the like merry jests," says his old biographer, "I have heard hinı tell, too long to be here noted." To the last, Burghley was somewhat jocose; and some of his sportive sayings have been recorded by Bacon. They show much more shrewdness than generosity; and are, indeed, neatly expressed reasons for exacting money rigorously, and for keeping it carefully. It must, however, be acknowledged, that he was rigorous and careful for the public advantage, as well as for his own. To extol his moral character, as Doctor Nares has extolled it, would be absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent him as a corrupt, rapacious, and bad-hearted man. He paid great attention to the interest of the state, and great attention also to the interest of his own family. He never deserted his friends till

it was very inconvenient to stand by them; | estates to his son, and carried arms about his was an excellent Protestant when it was not person. His best arms, however, were his savery advantageous to be a Papist; recommend-gacity and his self-command. The plot in ed a tolerant policy to his mistress as strongly which he had been an unwilling accomplice, as he could recommend it without hazarding ended, as it was natural that so odious and her favour; never put to the rack any person absurd a plot should end, in the ruin of its from whom it did not seem probable that very contrivers. In the mean time, Cecil quietly useful information might be derived; and was extricated himself, and, having been successo moderate in his desires, that he left only sively patronised by Henry, Somerset, and three hundred distinct landed estates, though he Northumberland, continued to flourish under might, as his honest servant assures us, have the protection of Mary. left much more, "if he would have taken money out of the exchequer for his own use, as many treasurers have done."

Burghley, like the old Marquess of Winchester, who preceded him in the custody of the White Staff, was of the willow, and not of the oak. He first rose into notice by defending the supremacy of Henry the Eighth. He was subsequently favoured and promoted by the Duke of Somerset. He not only contrived to escape unhurt when his patron fell, but became an important member of the administration of Northumberland. Doctor Nares assures us over and over again, that there could have been nothing base in Cecil's conduct on this occasion; for, says he, Cecil continued to stand well with Cranmer. This, we confess, hardly satisfies us. We are much of the mind of Falstaff s tailor. We must have better assurance for Sir John than Bardolph's. We like not the security.

He had no aspirations after the crown of martyrdom. He confessed himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns, took a priest into his house. Doctor Nares, whose simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us, that this was not superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing documents, to deny; while we feel in our own minds abundantly satisfied, that, during this very trying reign, he never abandoned the prospect of another revolution in fayour of Protestantism." In another place, the doctor tells us, that Cecil went to mass "with no idolatrous intention." Nobody, we believe, ever accused him of idolatrous intentions. The very ground of the charge against him is, that he had no idolatrous intentions. Nobody would have blamed him if he had really gone to Wimbledon church, with the feelings of a good Catholic, to worship the host. Doctor Nares speaks in several places, with just severity, of the sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the incomparable letters of Pascal. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that he should adopt, to the full extent, the jesuitical doctrine of the direction of intentions.

Through the whole course of that miserable intrigue which was carried on round the dying bed of Edward the Sixth, Cecil so demeaned himself as to avoid, first, the displeasure of Northumberland, and afterwards the displeasure of Mary. He was prudently unwilling to put his hand to the instrument which changed the course of the succession. But the furious Dudley was master of the palace. Cecil, therefore, according to his own account, excused We do not blame Cecil for not choosing to himself from signing as a party, but consented be burned. The deep stain upon his memory to sign as a witness. It is not easy to describe is, that, for differences of opinion for which he his dexterous conduct at this most perplexing would risk nothing himself, he, in the day of crisis, in language more appropriate than that his power, took away without scruple the lives which is employed by old Fuller: "His hand of others. One of the excuses suggested in wrote it as secretary of state," says that quaint these Memoirs for his conforming, during the writer; "but his heart consented not thereto. reign of Mary, to the Church of Rome, is, that Yea, he openly opposed it; though at last he may have been of the same mind with yielding to the greatness of Northumberland, those German Protestants who were called in an age when it was present drowning not Adiaphorists, and who considered the popish to swim with the stream. But as the philoso- rites as matters indifferent. Melancthon was pher tells us, that, though the planets be whirl-cne of these moderate persons, and "appears,” ed about daily from east to west, by the motion of the primum mobile, yet have they also a contrary proper motion of their own from west to east, which they slowly, though surely, move at their leisure; so Cecil had secret counterendeavours against the strain of the court herein, and privately advanced his rightful intentions against the foresaid duke's ambition." This was undoubtedly the most perilous conjuncture of Cecil's life. Wherever there was a safe course, he was safe. But here every course was full of danger. His situation rendered it impossible for him to be neutral. If he acted on either side, if he refused to act at all, he ran a fearful risk. He saw all the difficulties of his position. He sent his oney and plate out of London, made over his

says Doctor Nares, "to have gone greater lengths than any imputed to Lord Burghley." We should have thought this not only an excuse, but a complete vindication, if Burghley had been an Adiaphorist for the benefit of others, as well as for his own. If the popish rites were matters of so little moment, that a good Protestant might lawfully practise them for his safety, how could it be just or humane that a Papist should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, for practising them from a sense of duty. Unhappily, these non-essentials soon became matters of life and death. Just at the very time at which Burghley attained the highest point of power and favour, an act of Parliament was passed, by which the penalties of high treason were denounced against persons

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NARES'S MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.

knee. For Burghley alone, a chair was set in
her presence; and there the old minister, by
birth only a plain Lincolnshire esquire, took
his ease, while the haughty heirs of the Fitz-
alans and the De Veres humbled themselves to
the dust around him. At length, having sur-
vived all his early coadjutors and rivals, he
died full of years and honours. His royal
mistress visited him on his death-bed, and
cheered him with assurances of her affection
and esteem; and his power passed, with little
diminution, to a son who inherited his abili-
ties, and whose mind had been formed by his
counsels.

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Early in the reign of Mary, Cecil was employed in a mission scarcely consistent with the character of a zealous Protestant. He was sent to escort the Papal legate, Cardinal Pole, from Brussels to London. That great body of moderate persons, who cared more for the quiet of the realm than for the controverted points which were in issue between the churches, seem to have placed their chief hope in the wisdom and humanity of the gentle cardinal. Cecil, it is clear, cultivated the The life of Burghley was commensurate friendship of Pole with great assiduity, and received great advantage from his protection. But the best protection of Cecil, during the with one of the most important periods in the gloomy and disastrous reign of Mary, was that history of the world. It exactly measures the which he derived from his own prudence and time during which the house of Austria held from his own temper;-a prudence which unrivalled superiority, and aspired to univercould never be lulled into carelessness, a tem- sal dominion. In the year in which Burghley per which could never be irritated into rash- was born, Charles the Fifth obtained the impeness. The Papists could find no occasion rial crown. In the year in which Burghley against him. Yet he did not lose the esteem died, the vast designs which had for nearly a even of those sterner Protestants who had century kept Europe in constant agitation, preferred exile to recantation. He attached were buried in the same grave with the proud 159

The life of Burghley was commensurate also with the period during which a great mo

himself to the persecuted heiress of the throne, and entitled himself to her gratitude and confidence. Yet he continued to receive marks of favour from the queen. In the House of Com-ral mons, he put himself at the head of the party opposed to the court. Yet so guarded was his language, that even when some of those who acted with him were imprisoned by the Privy Council, he escaped with impunity.

revolution was effected; a revolution, the consequences of which were felt, not only in the cabinets of princes, but at half the firesides in Christendom. He was born when the great lived to see the schism complete, to see a line religious schism was just commencing. He of demarcation, which, since his death, has been very little altered, strongly drawn between Protestant and Catholic Europe.

At length Mary died. Elizabeth succeeded, and Cecil rose at once to greatness. He was The only event of modern times which can sworn in privy counsellor and secretary of state to the new sovereign before he left her prison of Hatfield; and he continued to serve be properly compared with the Reformation, is her for forty years, without intermission, in the the French Revolution; or, to speak more achighest employments. His abilities were pre-curately, that great revolution of political feelcisely those which keep men long in power. He belonged to the class of the Walpoles, the Pelhams, and the Liverpools; not to that of the St. Johns, the Carterets, the Chathams, and the Cannings. If he had been a man of original genius, and of a commanding mind, it would have been scarcely possible for him to keep his power, or even his head. There was not room in one government for an Elizabeth and a Richelieu. What the haughty daughter of Henry needed, was a moderate, cautious, flexible minister, skilled in the details of business, competent to advise, but not aspiring to command. And such a minister she found in Burghley. No arts could shake the confidence which she reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex, touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman; but no rival could deprive the Treasurer of the place which he possessed in the favour of the queen. She sometimes chid him sharply; but he was the man whom she delighted to honour. For Burghley, she forgot her usual parsimony both of wealth and of dignities. For Burghley, she relaxed that severe etiquette to which she was unreasonably attached. Every other person to whom she addressed her speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye fell, instantly sank on his

ing which took place in almost every part of
the civilized world during the eighteenth cen-
tury, and which obtained in France its most
terrible and signal triumph. Each of these
memorable events may be described as a rising
up of human reason against a caste. The
one was a struggle of the laity against the
clergy for intellectual liberty; the other was a
struggle of the people against the privileged
orders for political liberty. In both cases, the
spirit of innovation was at first encouraged by
the class to which it was likely to be most pre-
judicial. It was under the patronage of Fre-
derick, of Catharine, of Joseph, and of the
French nobles, that the philosophy which
afterwards threatened all the thrones and aris-
tocracies of Europe with destruction, first be-
came formidable. The ardour with which men
betook themselves to liberal studies at the close
of the fifteenth and the beginning of the six-
teenth century, was zealously encouraged by
the heads of that very church, to which liberal
studies were destined to be fatal. In both cases
when the explosion came, it came with a vio-
lence which appalled and disgusted many of
those who had previously been distinguished
by the freedom of their opinions. The violence
of the democratic party in France made Burke
a tory, and Alfieri a courtier; the violence of
the chiefs of the German schism made

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mus a defender of abuses, and turned the author of Utopia into a persecutor. In both cases, the convulsion which had overthrown deeplyseated errors, shook all the principles on which society rests to their very foundations. The minds of men were unsettled. It seemed for a time that all order and morality were about to perish with the prejudices with which they had been long and intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed. Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe swarmed with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits, zeal soured into malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political agitation of the eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the religious agitation of the sixteenth century sprang the Anabaptists. The partisans of Robespierre robbed and murdered in the name of fraternity and equality. The followers of Cnipperdoling robbed and murdered in the name of Christian liberty. The feeling of patriotism was, in many parts of Europe, almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral boundaries. Nations made war on each other with new arms; with arms which no fortifications, however strong by nature or by art, could resist; with arms before which rivers parted like the Jordan, and ramparts fell down like the walls of Jericho. Those arms were opinions, reasons, prejudices. The great masters of fleets and armies were often reduced to confess, like Milton's warlike angel, how hard they found it

"To exclude

Spiritual substance with corporeal bar."

"

of their spiritual bondage was effected "by plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war." We cannot but remember, that, as in the case of the French Revolution, so also in the case of the Reformation, those who rose up against tyranny were themselves deeply tainted with the vices which tyranny engenders. We cannot but remember, that libe's scarcely less scandalous than those of Herbert, mummeries scarcely less absurd than those of Clootz, and crimes scarcely less atrocious than those of Marat, disgrace the early history of Protestantism. The Reformation is an event long past. The volcano has spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated; and after having turned a garden into a desert, has again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second great eruption is not yet over. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are still hot beneath our feet. In some directions, the deluge of fire still continues to spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe that this explosion, like that which preceded it, will fertilize the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs of these times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up with a good hope for the future destinies of the human race.

The history of the Reformation in England Europe was divided, as Greece had been di- is full of strange problems. The most promivided during the period concerning which Thu-nent and extraordinary phenomenon which it cydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is in ordinary times, between state and state, but between two omnipresent factions, each of which was in some places dominant, and in other places oppressed, but which, openly or covertly, carried on their strife in the bosom of every society. No man asked whether another belonged to the same country with himself, but whether he belonged to the same sect. Party spirit seemed to justify and consecrate acts which, in any other times, would have been considered as the foulest of treasons. The French emigrant saw nothing disgraceful in bringing Austrian and Prussian hussars to Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no impropriety in serving the French Directory against his own native government. So, in the sixteenth century, the fury of theological factions often suspended all national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards were invited into France by the League; the English were invited into France by the Huguenots.

We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the spirit of democracy. But when we find that men zealous for the Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution as radically and essentially evil on account of those crimes and excesses, we cannot but remember, that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house

presents to us, is the gigantic strength of the government contrasted with the feebleness of the religious parties. During the twelve or thirteen years which followed the death of Henry the Eighth, the religion of the state was thrice changed. Protestantism was established by Edward; the Catholic Church was restored by Mary; Protestantism was again established by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation seemed to depend on the personal inclinations of the sovereign. Nor was this all. An established church was then, as a matter of course, a persecuting church. Edward persecuted Catholics. Mary persecuted Protestants. Elizabeth persecuted Catholics again. The father of those three sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of persecuting both sects at once; and had sent to death, on the same hurdle, the heretic who denied the real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal supremacy. There was nothing in England like that fierce and bloody opposition, which, in France, each of the religious factions in its turn offered to the govern ment. We had neither a Coligni nor a Mayenne; neither a Moncontour nor an Ivry. No English city braved sword and famine for the reformed doctrines with the spirit of Rochelle; nor for the Catholic doctrines with the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a league. Neither sect extorted a recantatio from the sovereign. Neither sect could obta

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NARES'S MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.

from an adverse sovereign even a toleration. | liaments were as obsequious as his Parlia The English Protestants, after several years of ments, that her warrant had as much authority domination, sank down with scarcely a strug- as his lettre-de-cachet. The extravagance with gle under the tyranny of Mary. The Catholics, which her courtiers eulogized her personal and after having regained and abused their old as- mental charms, went beyond the adulation of cendency, submitted patiently to the severe Boileau and Molière. Louis would have blushed rule of Elizabeth. Neither Protestants nor to receive from those who composed the gorCatholics engaged in any great and well-orga-geous circles of Marli and Versailles, the outnized scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings, suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies, in which only a small number of desperate men engaged-such were the utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.

The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been given, is very simple, but by no means satisfactory. The power of the crown, it is said, was then at its height, and was, in fact, despotic. This solution, we own, seems to us to be no solution at all.

ward marks of servitude which the haughty Britoness exacted of all who approached her. But the power of Louis rested on the support of his army. The power of Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people. Those who say that her power was absolute do not sisted. Her power consisted in the willing sufficiently consider in what her power conobedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her person and to her office, in their respect for the old line from which she sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enmeans, and the only means, which she had at joyed under her government. These were the It has long been the fashion, a fashion intro- her command for carrying her decrees into duced by Mr. Hume, to describe the English execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and monarchy in the sixteenth century as an abso- for crushing domestic treason. There was not lute monarchy. And such undoubtedly it ap- a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in pears to a superficial observer. Elizabeth, it any shire in England, which could not have is true, often spoke to her Parliaments in lan- overpowered the handful of armed men who guage as haughty and imperious as that which composed her household. If a hostile sovethe Great Turk would use to his divan. She reign threatened invasion, if an ambitious nopunished with great severity members of the ble raised the standard of revolt, she could House of Commons, who, in her opinion, car-have recourse only to the trainbands of her ried the freedom of debate too far. She assumed the power of legislating by means of proclamation. She imprisoned her subjects without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was often employed, in defiance of the laws of England, for the purpose of extorting confessions from those who were shut up in her dungeons. The authority of the Star-Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission was at its highest point. Severe restraints were imposed on political and religious discussion. The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could print without a license; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny of the primate or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were displeasing to the court were cruelly mutilated. like Stubbs, or put to death, like Penry. Nonformity was severely punished. The queen prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and discipline; and whoever departed from that rule, either to the right or to the left, was in danger of severe penalties.

Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the great body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the fierce contests of the sixteenth century, both the hostile parties spoke of the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. The great queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in Henry the Seventh's chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people.

The truth seems to be, that the government of the Tudors was, with a few occasional deviations, a popular government under the forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Louis the Fourteenth, that her Par

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capital, and the array of her counties, to the
citizens and yeomen of England, commanded
Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast
by the merchants and esquires of England.
preparations which Philip was making for the
subjugation of the realm, the first person to
whom the government thought of applying
for assistance was the Lord Mayor of London.
They sent to ask him what force the city would
engage to furnish for the defence of the king-
dom against the Spaniards. The mayor and
common council, in return, desired to know
The answer was-fifteen ships
what force the queen's highness desired them
to furnish.
and five thousand men. The Londoners deli-
berated on the matter, and two days after
"humbly entreated the council, in sign of their
perfect love and loyalty to prince and country,
to accept ten thousand men, and thirty ships
amply furnished."

People who could give such signs as these
verned with impunity. The English in the
of their loyalty were by no means to be misgo-
sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free
people. They had not, indeed, the outward
show of freedom; but they had the reality.
They had not a good constitution, but they had
that without which the best constitution is as
useless as the king's proclamation against vice
and immorality, that which, without any con-
stitution, keeps rulers in awe-force, and the
rarely held; and were not very respectfully
spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were
treated. The Great Charter was often violated.
But the people had a security against gross
and systematic misgovernment, far stronger
than all the parchment that was ever marked
with the sign manual, and than all the wax
that was ever pressed by the great seal.

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