Cecil’s position in London also was surrounded with difficulties. The Catholics, even those about the Queen, were busy, and reports of plans for poisoning Elizabeth continued without cessation. Everything, great and small, had to be done by Cecil. “He has,” writes the Bishop of Aquila, “absolutely taken possession of the Queen and Council, but he is so perplexed and unpopular that I do not know how he will be able to stand if there are any disturbances.”[151] The Queen, moreover, fell ill: “she is falling away and is extremely thin, and the colour of a corpse.” The sorely tried Secretary, bearing upon his shoulders everybody’s burden, frequently sick himself,[152] but working early and late, endeavouring to keep a middle course whilst holding to his policy, naturally aroused no enthusiasm. Extreme men of all parties cavilled at his methods; only the Queen grew in her trust of him, for she at least understood, as perhaps no other person did, that he was almost the only person near her who was not bribed. The city and the trading classes, however, by this time had seen the good results of his commercial and fiscal policy. From the first days of the reign he had set about reforming the currency, and he enters in his diary for 29th May of this year (1561) a statement which shows that his labours at last bore fruit. “Base monies decried and fine silver coined,” he writes; and in November a proclamation was issued that Spanish gold and silver money, which during the debasement of English coin had been a favourite form of currency, should no longer be allowed, but should be taken to the Queen’s mint for exchange into English coin. “The Queen,” grumbles the Spanish Ambassador, “makes a profit on it, as she did with the other money she called in.” No doubt she did, but the new pure coinage placed English merchants at an immense advantage in trading abroad, and they thanked Cecil for it.[153] “There hath,” says Camden, “been better and purer money in England than was seen in two hundred years before, or hath been elsewhere in use throughout Europe.” Nor was this all. Shipbuilding under subsidy had progressed very rapidly, and English commerce was penetrating into regions hitherto unapproached.[154] The Hawkinses had already shown the way to the West Coast of Africa, but the Portuguese had so far successfully resisted the establishment of a regular trade. English ships, however, now found their way down to Elmina, on the Gold Coast, with frequency distressing to the Portuguese; whilst English and Scotch privateers, and pirates who called themselves such, preyed almost unchecked upon Spanish and Flemish small craft about the Channel. Against both of these grievances the Spanish and Portuguese ministers complained often and bitterly. Throughout his life Cecil set his face against piracy in all its forms, as being inimical to legitimate trade, and at his instance five of the Queen’s ships were fitted out (1561) for the purpose