When Somerset fell in 1549 Cecil was still some way short of thirty; but he had an old head on his young shoulders—and he had every intention of keeping it there. He had no personal devotion to Somerset or to his policy, and had carefully avoided quarrelling with anybody. When he perceived that the ship was scuttled, he had no compunction about making sure of leaving it in a decent and orderly manner before it sank. He did not quite desert; he remained with the Protector in the discharge of his duties, while very nearly every one else was making a parade of sympathy with the cabal who obviously held the winning cards; but he remained there in careful obscurity—the personal secretary, not the partisan. He did not escape a brief imprisonment in the Tower; no doubt he had counted on that. But Warwick was perfectly aware of his power of making himself useful, and saw no possible reason why he should not avail himself thereof—nor did Cecil. Competent officials were few, and of these some had already put themselves out of court, in Warwick’s eyes, either by having supported Somerset too boldly or by displaying doubtful religious leanings. The former secretary of Somerset had not made himself obnoxious in any quarter; and in the following September (1550) he emerged again into public life in a more responsible position than before, as Secretary of State.

The political waters were, to say the least, unquiet; there was no telling when squalls might be coming. Personal intrigues were rife. Cecil had no ambition to grasp the tiller under these conditions. He was ready to give advice to the best of his ability; he was ready to carry out instructions, whether they accorded with his advice or not; but he was not disposed to give orders on his own account—his ambition was not of the vaulting sort. His business was to keep his own footing, whether others did so or no; he would take no risks unless his own life were endangered by refusing them—every man must take care of himself. If Warwick chose to insist on a policy which the secretary disapproved—alliance with France abroad, or debasement of coinage at home—that was Warwick’s business, not the secretary’s: what he had to do was to carry out the policy imposed on him, with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of friction, without allowing himself to be identified with the policy or with antagonism to it.

So when Warwick made up his mind that Somerset must be finally removed, it was Cecil’s cue to avoid, so far as he could, taking an active part in so ungracious a business as his old patron’s destruction—but certainly not to invite destruction for himself by injudicious partisanship. He did not scruple even to give Warwick information injurious to Somerset; though it was probably only because he knew it would reach that cunning schemer’s ears sooner or later—and when it came to a choice between profiting or suffering by the inevitable, he had no qualms about profiting. Still, he managed to be too much occupied with foreign negotiations to have much to do with the Somerset affair. As for the foreign negotiations themselves, he did not make any attempt to counteract the policy which, against his own judgment, he was called upon to carry out, but he was very seriously and not unsuccessfully engaged in minimising the untoward consequences which he foresaw.

As the young king’s death drew manifestly near, the intrigues of Northumberland, as Warwick had now become, thickened. Sir William—he had been knighted at the end of 1551—did not like intrigues; but in spite of seasonable illness, which may have been genuine, he could not altogether avoid being dragged in, and was obliged—like all the rest of the Council—to append his signature to the document nominating Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. He averred afterwards that he signed only as a witness—a statement more ingenious than ingenuous. Still, he took care that there should be evidence from unofficial quarters that he would have avoided signing if he could, and that so far as he was formally a participator in Northumberland’s plot it was with no goodwill to its success—which, indeed, was the attitude of several other signatories, who did their best to upset the scheme the moment they felt safe in doing so. Cranmer, however, the most reluctant of any of them, had no such double-dealing in his mind, and made no attempt to evade the responsibility when he had once assumed it, though he had been tricked into acquiescence by a lie.

It is only fair, in judging Cecil’s conduct through these years, to remember that he was only in his twenty-seventh year when Somerset became Protector, and in his thirty-third year when Queen Mary succeeded. Warwick made him Secretary of State eight days before his thirtieth birthday. Of course, if the errors he committed had been errors of youth, he would have won easy forgiveness; yet in some respects his excessive caution may reasonably be attributed to his youth. He had every excuse for arguing that a real control must be out of his reach for many years, and that till it came within his reach he was not called upon to insist on his own views. In those days the servants of the State did not resign—the remark has been made before—they carried out the policy imposed on them from above. He was content, therefore, to bide his time, and for the present to do the political drudgery for Somerset or Northumberland, while he avoided committing himself personally to anybody or anything. This course was not one which permitted the exercise of generosity or magnanimity; it completely eschewed the idea of self-sacrifice; but it was a course which he could and did pursue without ever fairly laying himself open to the charge of treachery, or incurring the faintest suspicion of what is called corruption. If he was guided by considerations of personal advantage, it was not in the sense that any one could bid successfully for his support.

So when Northumberland’s plot collapsed ignominiously, Cecil, although a Protestant and officially opposed to Gardiner, had no difficulty in making his peace with the new Government. Only, the political seas being stormier than ever, he had no inclination either to head an Opposition or to take a prominent place among the queen’s ministers. He was too much of a Protestant for that, though not too much so to conform and “bow himself in the House of Rimmon.” In short, he courted an obscurity from which the Government had no desire to extract him—though it is probable that if he had chosen to offer himself as an instrument for Mary’s use, she would have availed herself of him readily enough. But it was one thing to pass from Somerset’s employ to Warwick’s, and another to pass from Northumberland’s to Mary’s. Besides, by keeping in the background now he could quietly establish himself in the confidence of the probable successor to the throne, the Princess Elizabeth. Being a member of the Parliament of 1556, he therein openly opposed sundry Government measures which were hotly resisted by the House of Commons, but even then he behaved with circumspection and did not suffer for his conduct. His real business was with Elizabeth; and when the crisis came, and Mary died, the members of the Council who hastened to Hatfield found Cecil already installed as her Prime Minister elect, with the scheme for carrying on the Government completely organised.

III
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION

Sir William had bided his time, and that time had arrived. On the throne was a young woman of five-and-twenty, who had already shown a skill akin to Cecil’s own in the avoidance of fatally compromising words or acts under circumstances when the utmost wariness had been the constant condition of safety. She had maintained her Protestantism in precisely the same way and in very much the same degree as he had done; moreover, she was bound for her own sake to maintain it, since her personal claim to legitimate birth was bound up with the rejection of Papal authority. Cecil had received her confidence, it may be, in part, because she was aware that she could afford to indulge her own waywardness more freely while she had so eminently safe a counsellor as a stand-by. He, for his part, was doubtless fully satisfied that she had intelligence enough to recognise that he was indispensable to her, and that in the main their views of policy would harmonise. The young man had held aloof from intrigues and had declined all temptations to grasp at dangerous power, not from lack of ambition or of patriotism, but because the power would have been too dearly bought and its foundations too unstable. Now, while he was still in the prime of life, yet of ripe experience, power lay ready for him to grasp—power to guide England in the courses which he believed would serve her best interests; power to cure the evils from which she had been suffering for many a year past; power to avert those which menaced her in the future; power which, once achieved, he was not likely to lose unless by his own blundering. He knew his own capacity. To refuse power under such conditions would have been not caution but pusillanimity.

It may be that the account of Cecil’s public life during the reigns of Edward and Mary gives an impression merely that he was an exceedingly astute young man with no principles to speak of. If so, that view must be corrected. He valued himself on his own complete integrity, and would have done nothing which he recognised as inconsistent therewith. He had principles, but not enthusiasms. In politics, as in religion, he had his own opinions, but in both he admitted a very large body of adiaphora, things which were not questions of principle, though regarded as such by persons afflicted with enthusiasms. On all such matters, passive or even active conformity to the policy of de facto rulers was permissible. He was ready to go to Mass, but not to take a part in the suppression of Protestantism. He would assent to Northumberland’s plot, but he would not further it. His integrity drew a line—lower than a person of finer moral susceptibilities would have drawn it, but with sufficient firmness and decision, and higher than most of his more prominent contemporaries. He did not feel called upon to swim against a stream which would overwhelm him if he did so; but he made for a backwater. It is often difficult to judge when and where courage becomes rashness, and prudence cowardice. On the whole, he was more inclined to be too prudent than too bold; but it was not because he lacked courage. His conduct might on occasion, though rarely, be charged as disloyal; it could never fairly be called treacherous. He was convinced that as a general rule honesty is the best policy, and justice is the best policy; but in the exceptional cases where he thought they were not, he chose—the best policy. The principles of his mistress were the same; but she deviated from the mean of resolute caution more markedly and more erratically than her minister; she was more readily rash and more easily frightened; her criterion of justice was lax, and her sense of honesty very nearly non-existent.

There was this very important difference between the state of affairs on Queen Elizabeth’s accession and their position between 1546 and 1558. Hitherto a statesman, even if perfectly secure of power, would still have had a difficult course to steer; but security being wanting, the lack of it was the gravest of all the difficulties. The course of safety now was not less intricate; but, in spite of appearances, there was no longer the same risk of incalculable irregular forces wrecking the ship. To retain a useful illustration or analogy; it was one thing to be responsible for bringing the ship home “through billows and through gales,” and another to carry her through a narrow and devious channel infested with reefs and sandbanks, in fair weather. The pilot who judged that he knew every inch of the reefs and sandbanks might feel that the business was an anxious one; to the less discerning passenger, he would often seem to be heading his vessel straight for the rocks; but the pilot himself would not feel any fear of finding himself helpless. As long as he made no mistakes he would be safe; and if he made mistakes, it would be his own fault.