This, then, is how he managed cleverly to stand in with Burghley whilst serving Leicester. “Touching my private opinion of the marriage, the great impediment that I find in the same is the contentment of the eye. The gentleman, sure, is void of any good favour, besides the blemish of the small pocks. Now, when I weigh the same with the delicateness of her Majesty’s eye, and considering also that there are some about her in credit, who in respect of their particular interests, have neither regard for her Majesty, nor to the preservation of our country from ruine, and will rather increase the misliking by defacing him than by dutifully laying before her the necessity of marriage … I hardly think there will ever grow any liking.… Whether this marriage be sincerely meant here or not is a hard point to judge … in my opinion I think rather no than yea.”[371] This was almost the last letter written by Walsingham as Ambassador. He was recalled, to be shortly afterwards appointed joint-Secretary of State with Sir Thomas Smith, with the intention of still further relieving Burghley from routine labour; and Dr. Dale, as Ambassador in Paris, kept alive the ridiculous, and frequently insincere, discussion of the marriage of Elizabeth and Alençon.[372] Burghley’s labours and anxieties were not confined to foreign affairs. His interest in the uniformity and discipline of the Anglican Church was unceasing, and especially in connection with his Chancellorship of Cambridge University, gave him endless anxiety. The vestments controversy had now widened and deepened. The famous tract called “An Admonition to Parliament” had been presented to the Parliament of 1572 by Cartwright; and its violence in a Puritan direction had provoked a controversy, which, at the period now under consideration (1573), had developed on one side into a bitter antagonism to prelacy, and even sacerdotalism in all its forms. Both parties appealed to Burghley. He made a speech in the Star Chamber which left no doubt as to his attitude, if any such ever existed, on the point. The Queen, he said, was determined to have the laws obeyed. No innovation of ritual or practice would be permitted. If any of the “novelists” were under the impression that departures from the rules laid down would remain unpunished, he disabused their minds. A Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, named Chark, violently attacked the hierarchy from the University pulpits, and was admonished. He persisted, and was ejected from his Fellowship. Another Cambridge man, Edward Dering, Lecturer at St. Paul’s Cathedral, acted similarly, and was summoned before the Privy Council, and was suspended from his preferment. At the instance of Bishop Sandys[373] he was restored, but again brought before the Star Chamber when he addressed a long letter to Burghley advocating his views. Whilst Leicester always favoured the Puritans, the Lord Treasurer was thus on the side of the law and the prelates;