If his own conduct was ruled—as some of his actions certainly were—by the maxims which in middle age he laid down for his favourite son, he must have been a marvel of prudence and wisdom. Like the usual recommendations of age to youth, many of these precepts simply inculcate moderation, religion, virtue, and other obviously good qualities; but here and there Cecil’s own philosophy of life peeps out, and some of the reasons of his success are exhibited. “Let thy hospitality be moderate, … rather plentiful than sparing, for I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table.… Beware thou spendest not more than three of four parts of thy revenue, and not above a third part of that in thy house.” “That gentleman who sells an acre of land sells an ounce of credit, for gentility is nothing else but ancient riches.” “Suffer not thy sons to cross the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism; and if by travel they get a few broken languages, they shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served up in divers dishes. Neither train them up in wars, for he that sets up to live by that profession can hardly be an honest man or a good Christian.” “Beware of being surety for thy best friends; he that payeth another man’s debts seeketh his own decay.” “Be sure to keep some great man thy friend, but trouble him not with trifles; compliment him often with many, yet small, gifts.” “Towards thy superiors be humble, yet generous; with thine equals familiar, yet respectful; towards thine inferiors show much humanity, and some familiarity, as to bow the body, stretch forth the hand, and to uncover the head.” “Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or estate, for it is mere folly for a man to enthral himself to his friend.” Such maxims as these evidently enshrine much of his own temper, and throughout his career he rarely seems to have violated them. His was a selfish and ungenerous gospel, but a prudent and circumspect one. From the first days of his appointment as Secretary of State, the Duchess of Suffolk was again his constant correspondent. As she was one of the first to condole with him on his misfortune, she was early to congratulate him on “the good exchanges he had made, and on having come to a good market”;[29] and thenceforward all the Lincolnshire gossip from Grimsthorpe and Tattershall reached the Secretary regularly, with many Lincolnshire petitions, and much business in the buying and leasing of land by Cecil in the county, although his father lived until the following year, 1552.[30] His erudite wife, of whom he always speaks with tender regard, seems to have kept up a correspondence in Greek with their friend, Sir Thomas Morysine, the English Ambassador to the Emperor, and with the learned Joannes Sturmius, to which several references are made in Morysine’s eccentric and affected letters to Cecil in the State Papers, Foreign.