Note 16 — Chapter VII

— I have seen the statement in a letter of the Earl (who was one of the most scientific men of his age) which he wrote after the discovery of the Plot. The letter is in Collins’ “Peerage.” The Earl of Salisbury was Northumberland’s enemy, as Northumberland was looked up to by the popish recusants as a sort of natural leader, though the Earl, on his own avowal, was no papist. Salisbury’s native perspicacity, however, told him that Northumberland, from every point of view, was alike to the Royal House of Stuart and to the noble house of Salisbury dangerous. For had the oppressed papists “thrown off” the yoke of James in course of time, Salisbury’s life would have been not worth the price of a farthing candle; and the philosophic, nonchalant Northumberland would have thought that the papists’ support was well “worth a Mass,” just as did King Harry of Navarre, the father of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I., a few years previously. (An ancient portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria is in the possession of the York Merchant Adventurers, York.) Then again, Salisbury had a personal grudge against the proud Percy. For the latter evidently in his heart scorned and rejected Salisbury, not only as a novus homo — a new man — but as belonging to that band of statesmen who had controlled Elizabeth’s policy, and told her not what she ought to do, but what she could do; and whom the great Northern Earl would have been taught from his cradle to spurn at and despise, because they were nothing other than “a low bad lot,” who “were for themselves;” very different indeed from the Earls of Essex, Walter and Robert, and such men as Sir Henry Sidney and his still greater son, Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of the England of his day. Percy indeed once declared that if Percy blood and Cecil blood were both poured into a bowl, the former would refuse to mix with the latter. So, human nature being what it is, no wonder the shrewd and able Salisbury had no love for the “high and mighty” Northumberland, and that carpe diem — seize your opportunity — was Salisbury’s motto as soon as he got the chance. (I know of no stronger proof that, during the past 300 years, in spite of back-waters, the world has made true moral progress than the contrast presented by the present Prime Minister and the present First Lord of the Treasury and their ancestors of “Great Eliza’s golden time” and the days of James Stuart.)