The Great Lord Burghley

The Great Lord Burghley, with the subtitle A Study in Elizabethan Statecraft, is by Martin A. S. Hume. The book carries a saying credited to Lord Burghley: he can never be a good statesman who respecteth not the public more than his own private advantage. The dedication offers this attempt at a political biography of an illustrious ancestor, the prime minister of Queen Elizabeth, to the Third Marquis of Salisbury, prime minister of Queen Victoria.

The book tells how Somerset marched upon Scotland with an army of 18,000 men, supported by a powerful fleet, in September 1547, with his trusted Cecil attending him in the capacity apparently of provost-marshal. A chapter headed 1576-1580 notes that Requesens, the Spanish Viceroy of Flanders, had died in March 1576, before his mission of pacification was complete. A letter full of grief still, written to an old friend, the Earl of Shrewsbury, is signed From my poore lodge neare my howss at Theobalds, 27 Maii 1589.