The delighted merchant was pressed to stay to supper to meet such great personages as the Earl of Sussex, the Lord Chamberlain, and others; and the next day he was in conference with Burghley for hours, with the result that the latter consented to draw up a new draft treaty for the reopening of trade, one of the clauses of which was to touch upon the tender subject of the treatment extended by the Inquisition to English merchants and mariners in Spain. Burghley hinted to De Guaras that some of the Council were against an accord, but he persuaded him that his own feelings were all in favour of a renewal of the close understanding with the House of Burgundy. De Guaras was backwards and forwards to court for weeks, more charmed than ever with the Lord Treasurer’s amiability. “It is,” he says, “undoubted that a great amount of dissension exists in the Council, some being friendly to our side, and others to the French; but the best Councillor of all of them is Lord Burghley, as he follows the tendency of the Queen, which is towards concord. As he is supreme in the country and in the Queen’s estimation, in all the important Councils which were held during the days that I was at court, he, with his great eloquence, having right on his side, was able to persuade those who were opposed to him. He assured me privately that he had gained over the great majority of his opponents, and especially the Earl of Leicester, who has always been on the side of the French.”[362] Burghley could be very persuasive and talkative when it suited him, as it very rarely did. The French, he said, were most anxious for a close alliance, but the Queen and himself set but small store on “these noisy French and Italians.”