Burghley’s private correspondence with his steward, Kemp, at Burghley, at this period, shows that his care for detail in his household management was as unwearied as ever. One letter written in June 1573 by Kemp is very curious. Burghley’s mother was still alive, but, of course, very aged. She appears to have become unduly penurious as to her garb, and her son had ordered a dress for the old lady. The steward writes: “Mr. Thomas Cecil came home well, and my mistress, your mother, came to Burghley two hours before him. The gown that you would make, it must be for every day, and yet because it comes from you (except you write to her to the contrary) she will make it her holiday gown; whereof she hath great store already, both of silk and cloth. But I think, sir, if you make her one of cloth, with some velvet on it, with your letter to desire her for your sake to wear it daily, she would accustom herself to it; so as she would forget to go any longer in such base apparel as she hath used to have a delight in, which is too mean for one of a lower estate than she is.” The old lady also desired a chaplain for service twice a day; and by Burghley’s endorsement on the letter, it is evident that the gown and the chaplain were sent to her. During the Queen’s great progress through Kent and Sussex in the autumn, Burghley attended her; and whilst the court was at Eridge, the Treasurer, not without difficulty, persuaded the Queen to accede to Mary Stuart’s request, through the Earl of Shrewsbury, that she should be allowed to visit the baths of Buxton, whither shortly afterwards Burghley himself went for his own malady,[377] and saw the unhappy Queen, whom on this occasion, at all events, he impressed not unfavourably.[378] During the Queen’s progress, which was on a more lavish scale even than usual,[379] a determined attempt was made—and, according to one of Mary Stuart’s letters from Buxton, not quite unsuccessfully—to arouse Elizabeth’s distrust of Burghley. Simultaneously there were sent to the Queen, to Burghley, to Bacon, and the principal courtiers and ecclesiastics, another violent book printed in France against Burghley and the Lord Keeper. A copy was sent to the Queen by Lord Windsor, a refugee on the Continent, with great professions of attachment, and hints evidently directed against Burghley, “although for my part, in mine opinion, I suppose he is too wise to be overtaken in many of those things which he is touched withal.”[380] Burghley received his copy from an unknown hand in Canterbury Cathedral precincts, where he was lodged, and it appears quite to have upset his equanimity. He wrote (11th September 1573) to the Archbishop (Parker) bitterly resenting the attack at such a time “by some domestic hidden scorpion.” “If God and our consciences were not our defence and consolation against these pestilential darts, we might well be weary of our lives.” Parker returned “the mad book, so outrageously penned that malice hath made him blind.