We are told by his household biographer that two of Cecil’s favourite aphorisms were: “That war is the curse, and peace the blessing of God upon a nation,” and “That a realm gaineth more by one year’s peace than by ten years’ war.” He and his mistress plainly saw that the first task for them to perform was to put an end to the disastrous and inglorious war into which for his own ends Philip had dragged England. Here, on the very threshold of Elizabeth’s reign, Cecil’s influence upon her policy was apparent and eminently successful. Cecil came from the Charterhouse to see Feria at Durham Place on the 24th November, saying that the Queen was sending Lord Cobham to inform Philip in Flanders officially of Queen Mary’s death; but two days afterwards, one of Feria’s spies at court, probably Lord William Howard, sent him word that this was not Cobham’s only mission. He was to turn aside to Cercamp, on the French frontier, where the peace commissioners were assembled, except Arundel, who had hurried back as soon as he learnt of the Queen’s death, in order to take fresh commissions from Elizabeth to Dr. Thirlby, Arundel, and Wotton. Feria, on this news, sent post-haste to Philip’s Secretary of State, telling him to advise the Spanish “commissioners to keep their eyes on these Englishmen, in case this should be some trick to our detriment, as I was told nothing about his going to Cercamp till he (Cobham) had gone.”[93]
But no trick was meant which should divide England from the House of Burgundy. The instructions carried by Cobham[94] were drafted by Cecil, and made the restitution of Calais the main point of the English demand; and Wotton was instructed to accompany Cobham to Philip, to persuade the latter to support the English in their demand. The commissioners, moreover, were instructed to insert in the treaty an article reserving all former treaties between England and the House of Burgundy. Before these instructions reached the hands of the commissioners, the suspension of hostilities for two months, which had so much disquieted the Queen when Feria told her of it, had been arranged. There is no doubt that the willingness of the French to agree to this suspension had been occasioned by their desire to enter into separate negotiations with the new Queen and her ministers, with the object of causing distrust between Spain and England; and here it was that Cecil had his first opportunity of proving his ability. Lord Grey had been captured by the French at Guînes, and early in January 1559 was allowed to return to England on parole, for the purpose, ostensibly, of arranging an exchange. He brought with him a message from the Dukes of Guise and Montpessart, proposing a secret arrangement between England and France. This was not the first intimation of such a desire; for some weeks before, a similar but less authoritative message was brought by the Protestant Florentine, Guido Cavalcanti, from the Vidame de Chartres; and Cavalcanti had gone back to France with kind but vague expressions of good-will from Elizabeth. When Lord Grey’s message arrived, Cecil considered it in all its bearings, and drew up one of his judicial reports[95] in which Grey’s answer to Guise is dictated. With much circumlocution the Queen’s willingness to make peace is expressed, “if all things done in her sister’s time be revoked”; or, in other words, that Calais should be restored. But what Grey was not told was Cecil’s recommendation to the Queen: “It seemeth necessary to allow this overture of peace, so as neither so to lyke of it, nor so to follow it, as thereby any jelusy shall arise in the hart of the King of Spain, but that principally that that amyty be preserved and this not refused.”