I have written with no preconceived theory to prove, no religious or political aim to serve, or doctrine to establish. My only desire has been to follow facts whithersoever they may lead me, and to pourtray a lofty personality who has left an enduring impress on the history of his country. I have not sought to present Cecil as a demigod—or even as a genius of the first class—as most of his biographers have done. The ways and methods of Elizabethan statesmen need not be concealed or apologised for because they do not square with the ethics of to-day. At a time when the bulk of the English people cheerfully changed their faith four times in a generation to please their rulers, it would be absurd to hold up to especial obloquy a minister for having persecuted at one time a religion which at another time he professed. The final triumph of England in that struggle of giants was won by statesmen who, like their mistress, owed as much to what we should now call their failings as they did to their virtues. Their vacillation and tergiversation in the face of rigid and stolid opponents were main elements of their success. Cecil was by far the most honest and patriotic of them; but he, too, was a man of his age, and must be judged from its standpoint—not from that of to-day. If I have succeeded in presenting more clearly than some of my predecessors a view of the process by which England was made great, the man who, above all others, was instrumental under God in making it so, may well be judged by the splendid results of his lifelong labour; and his reputation for religious constancy, moral generosity, and political scrupulousness, placed in the opposite scale, will hardly stir the balance. MARTIN A. S. HUME LONDON, _September 1898_. THE GREAT LORD BURGHLEY CHAPTER I 1520-1549 It may be stated as an historical truism that great organic changes in the relationship of human beings towards each other are usually preceded by periods of quiescence and apparent stability, during which unsuspected forces of preparation are at work. When the moment of crisis comes, the unthinking marvel that men are ready, as if by magic, to accept, and, if need be, to fight and die for, the new order of ideas. Although the outward manifestation of it may be unexpected, yet, in reality, no vast, far-reaching revolution in human institutions is sudden: only that the short-sightedness of all but the very wisest fails to see the signs until the forces are openly arrayed and the battle set.