simpler and less rigid form of Christian doctrine than that imposed by Rome. But in the party of reform Cecil was always the most conservative element. Other councillors might be, and were, driven hither and thither by bribery, by passion, by a desire to flatter the Queen’s caprice, by religious zeal or mere ineptitude, but Cecil was judicious, well-nigh incorruptible, prudent, patriotic, and clear-headed; and though he was often obliged to dissemble and give way, he always returned to his point. Protestant zeal must not hurry the Government too far, or too fast, against the sworn enemies of Protestantism. England must be kept free from entanglements with Rome, but she must also avoid as long as possible national warfare with Rome’s principal supporter; for Spain was England’s buckler against French aggression, and the possessor of the rich harbours of the Netherlands where English commerce found its main outlet. Throughout a long life of ceaseless activity, in which he had to deal with ever-varying circumstances and problems; hampered by bitter rivals at home and sleepless enemies abroad, Cecil’s methods shifted so frequently, and apparently so contradictorily, as to have bewildered most of those who have essayed to unravel his devious diplomacy. But shift as he might, there was ever the one stable and changeless principle which underlay all his policy, and guided all his actions. He had been brought up in the traditional school of English policy which regarded the House of Burgundy as a friend, and France as the natural enemy whose designs in Scotland and Flanders must be frustrated, or England must be politically and commercially ruined. For centuries England’s standing danger had been her liability to invasion by the French over the Scottish border, and for the first forty years of Cecil’s life the main object of English statecraft was to break permanently the secular connection between Scotland and France, and to weaken the latter country by favouring her great rival in Flanders.