[587] The reports of spies of plots in Flanders at the time amply justified the precautionary measures taken. Burghley was still appealed to by both religious parties, and he appears at this time to have been claimed by both. In March 1591 one of the spy-letters suggested by Phillips to be sent abroad mentions Burghley’s feud with Archbishop Whitgift and his favour to the Puritans. The Catholic spy in Flanders, Snowdon, in June of the same year, says that the anti-Spanish English Catholic refugees there, Lord Vaux, Sir T. Tresham, Mr. Talbot, and Mr. Owen were opposed to the plots then in progress. “It is said amongst them that if occasion be offered they will requite the relaxation now afforded them by his Lordship’s (Burghley’s) moderation, for it is noted that since the cause of the Catholics came to his arbitrament things have gone on with wonderful suavity” (State Papers, Dom.). On the other hand, Phillips (in July) tells another spy, St. Mains, of the extravagances of the fanatics, Hacket, Coppinger, and Ardington, and speaks of Burghley as being on the side of the Puritans.
[588] In a spirited reply (Hatfield Papers) to a remonstrance of Antony Standen, Lord Burghley insists that Catholics who were punished by death in England are “only those who profess themselves by obedience to the Pope to be no subjects of the Queen; and though their outward pretence be to be sent from the seminaries to convert people to their religion, yet without reconciling them from their obedience to the Queen they never give them absolution.” Those, he says, who still retain their allegiance to the Queen, but simply absent themselves from churches, are only fined in accordance with the law. The same contention is more elaborately stated in Lord Burghley’s essay on “The Execution of Justice.” The examinations of various spies, giving alarming accounts of the plots in Flanders at this time to kill the Queen and Burghley (State Papers, Domestic), afford ample proof that Lord Burghley’s contention as to the aims of the Spanish seminarists was correct.
[589] Francis Bacon frankly confessed that he adhered to Burghley’s enemies because he thought it would be for his own personal advantage as well as for that of the State; and his brother Antony writes (Bacon Papers): “On the one side, I found nothing but fair words, which make fools fain, and yet even in those no offer or hopeful assistance of real kindness, which I thought I might justly expect at the Lord Treasurer’s hands, who had inned my ten years’ harvest into his own barn.”
[590] It was during this progress at Oxford that the circumstance thus related by Sir J. Harrington happened: “I may not forget how the Queen in the midst of her oration casting her eye aside, and seeing the old Lord Treasurer standing on his lame feet for want of a stool, she called in all haste for a stool for him; nor would she proceed in her speech till she saw him provided. Then she fell to it again as if there had been no interruption.” Harrington says that some one (probably Essex) twitted her for doing this on purpose to show off her Latin.
[591] Writing to Archibald Douglas advising him how to excuse as well as he might the depredations of Scotsmen on Danish shipping, he says in a postscript, “I write not this in favour of piracies, for I hate all pirates mortally” (Hatfield Papers, part iv.).
[592] Lansdowne MSS., lxx.
[593] Lansdowne MSS., lxx., and Hatfield Papers, part iv.
[594] Through the whole of the autumn and winter Lord Burghley was busy in the liquidation and division of the vast plunder brought in the carrack. Ralegh had risked every penny he possessed, and came out a loser. The Queen got the lion’s share, and the adventurers, with the exception of Ralegh, received large bonuses.
[595] One of Thomas Phillips’ suggested spy-letters to be sent abroad (22nd March 1591) says that although the Puritan party is the weaker, Essex has made Ralegh join him in their favour. Ralegh’s Puritan birth and breeding naturally gave him sympathy for Essex’s party, whilst his active temperament and his greed made him in favour of war, especially with Spain. His only tie with the Cecils was his early political connection. Though he was usually in personal enmity with Essex, his natural bent was therefore more in sympathy with Essex’s party than with that to which he was supposed to be attached.
[596] State Papers, Domestic.