The replies and recommendations of the bishops to the Council’s circular, referred to in a previous note (page 160), had caused much apprehension amongst Catholics; and the Queen herself, as well as Cecil, assured Guzman that the bishops should do the Catholics no harm; whilst, on the other hand, Cecil’s Protestant friends were urging him to adopt strong measures to prevent the growth of the “Papists.” Cecil’s reply to one such recommendation shows that he was just as ready to wound Leicester underhand as Leicester was him. “He replied that he was doing what he could, but he did not know who was at the Queen’s ear to soften her so, and render her less zealous in this than she ought to be.”[208]
Cecil’s greatest difficulty, indeed, at this time, was from Leicester, who had now quite enlisted Sir Nicholas Throgmorton against his former friend. In order to enable Leicester with some decency to accept the Order of St. Michael, Throgmorton suggested that the Queen might ask for another Cross of the Order to be given to the Duke of Norfolk. When Cecil learned this, he was obliged to remonstrate with the Queen, and point out how undesirable it was in the present state of affairs to place two of her most powerful nobles under an obligation to France. At a time when Cecil was straining every nerve to keep on good terms with the House of Austria, and conciliating the Catholics, in order to checkmate Mary Stuart, Leicester had agents running backwards and forwards to France, in the hope of bringing forward in an official form the farcical offer of Charles IX.’s hand for the Queen, which offer he knew would come to nothing, whilst rendering abortive the Archduke’s suit, upon which Cecil depended to so great an extent.
The dexterity and cleverness of Cecil under these circumstances is shown very markedly in the manner in which he changed in a very few months the opinion of the Spanish Ambassador about him, as soon as his policy rendered it necessary to gain his good opinion. “When I first arrived here,” writes Guzman, January 2, 1565, “I imagined Secretary Cecil … to be very different from what I have found him in your Majesty’s affairs. He is well disposed towards them, truthful, lucid, modest, and just; and although he is zealous in serving his Queen, which is one of his best traits, yet he is amenable to reason. He knows the French, and, like an Englishman, is their enemy. He assured me on his oath … that the French have always made great efforts to attract to their country the Flanders trade (_i.e._ with England). With regard to his religion I say nothing, except that I wish he were a Catholic … but he is straightforward, and shows himself well affected towards your Majesty … for he alone it is who makes or mars business here.”[209]