Leicester was for ever clamouring for open help to be sent to Orange; the Puritans, who took their cue from him, were more aggressive than ever in the country;[398] but ready as the Queen might be to dally Leicester, she took care to make no serious move in the knotty question of the Netherlands without the advice of her “spirit,” as she nicknamed the great Lord Treasurer.[399] In spite of his almost continual illness, she summoned him to her, wherever she might be; and at about the period when the letters just quoted were written, the Earl of Sussex writes saying that the Queen has just received intelligence from beyond the seas which she must discuss with him at once. When Burghley had seen the Queen, either on that occasion or soon after, and returned home, Sussex writes thus: “Her Majesty spoke honourably of your Lordship’s deserts, and of her affection for you, and of your sound, deep judgment and counsel; using these words, ‘that no prince in Europe had such a councillor as she had of him.’ If your Lordship had heard her speeches, they must needs have been to your great contentment. The end of her Majesty’s speeches was that she prayed your Lordship to come to Nonsuch, as soon as you conveniently might.” Burghley, indeed, was the only one of her ministers whom she treated with anything approaching respect, for he always respected himself. Walsingham, especially, was the object of her vulgar abuse. “Scurvy knave” and “rogue” were the terms she frequently applied to him; and it was apparently not at all an uncommon thing for her, in moments of impatience with him, to pluck off her high-heeled shoe and fling it in his face. Leicester she alternately petted and insulted. After a squabble he used to sulk at Wanstead for a few days, till she softened and commanded him to return, and then the comedy recommenced. Hatton and Heneage were treated in similar fashion, but with even less consideration. Only towards the Lord Treasurer, except for occasional fits of distrust caused by his enemies, the Queen usually behaved with decorum. How careful he was to avoid all cause for doubt is seen by his answer to Lord Shrewsbury’s offer of his son as a husband for one of Burghley’s daughters.[400] It will be recollected that Lord Shrewsbury had the custody of the Queen of Scots, and that Burghley had fallen into semi-disgrace shortly before, because he had visited Buxton at the same time as Mary and her keeper. The match proposed was a good one, and the Lord Treasurer—a new noble—was flattered and pleased at the offer, but declined it, mainly because his enemies had put into the Queen’s head that he had gone to Buxton at the instance of the Shrewsburys, to plot in favour of Mary; “and hereof at my return to her Majesty’s presence, I had very sharp reproofs … with plain charging of me for favouring the Queen of Scots, and that in so earnest sort, as I never looked for, knowing my integrity to her Majesty, but specially knowing how contrariously the