and though he was constantly chosen as arbiter, even by those with whom he disagreed, he never wavered in his insistence on the maintenance of uniformity, and obedience to the prescriptions laid down by Parliament and the rulers of the Church.[374] Notwithstanding the appointment of two Secretaries of State, which somewhat relieved him from writing despatches, almost every matter, great and small, was still referred to Burghley. We have given instances of his activity in foreign and ecclesiastical affairs; but, as Ellis[375] truly says, “from a question of peace or war, down to a regulation for the lining of slop hose; from quarrels at court to the bickering between a schoolmaster and his scholar; from the arrest of a peer to the punishment of a cutpurse—all was reported to him, and by all parties in turn his favour was craved.” It must have been difficult for him to keep clear of court factions and scandal; but though it was notorious that Leicester always opposed him, they still remained outwardly friendly, and their letters to each other are full of civil expressions. Sussex and Hatton were for ever at feud with Leicester. Alençon’s amorous agents scandalised all beholders by their open flirting with the Queen, to which Leicester retorted by making violent love to two sisters, Lady Sheffield and Frances Howard; and the light-hearted and light-heeled young Earl of Oxford, Burghley’s son-in-law at this time (1573), had danced himself into the good graces of the erotic Queen, which he soon lost by his folly. Stern Lady Burghley openly and imprudently condemned this philandering, and the Queen fell into a rage with her; yet “my Lord Treasurer, even after his old manner, dealeth with matters of the State only, and beareth himself very uprightly.… At all these love matters my Lord Treasurer winketh, and will not meddle any way.”[376]