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: all which were the steps of his
father's greatness, and of the honour he left to his house. For his
person, he was not much beholden to Nature, though somewhat for his
face, which was the best part of his outside: for his inside, it
may be said, and without offence, that he was his father's own son,
and a pregnant precedent in all his discipline of state: he was a
courtier from his cradle, which might have made him betimes; but he
was at the age of twenty and upwards, and was far short of his
after-proof, but exposed, and by change of climate he soon made show
what he was and would be.
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