Note 39 — Chapter II

This, it must be allowed, is a somewhat facile species of argument. Though wills are not formally opened until after the testators' deaths, it is not impossible for their contents to be previously communicated to others, when there is an object for so doing.[39] But, however this may be, it can scarcely be said that the weight of evidence tends in this direction. Not to mention the fact that, while enjoying the entire confidence of Queen Elizabeth, Cecil was engaged in a secret correspondence with King James, which she would have regarded as treasonable—and which he so carefully concealed that for a century afterwards and more it was not suspected—there remains the other indubitable fact, that while similarly trusted by James, and while all affairs of State were entirely in his hands, he was in receipt of a secret pension from the King of Spain,[40] the very monarch any communication with whom he treated as treason on the part of others.[41] It is certain that the Earl of Essex, when on his trial, asserted that Cecil had declared the Spanish Infanta to be the rightful heir to the crown, and though the secretary vehemently denied the imputation, he equally repudiated the notion that he favoured the King of Scots.[42] We know, moreover, that one who as Spanish Ambassador had dealings with him, pronounced him to be a venal traitor, who was ready to sell his soul for money,[43] while another intimated[44] that it was in his power to have charged him with "unwarrantable practices." Similarly, we hear from the French minister of the ingrained habit of falsehood which made it impossible for the English secretary to speak the truth even to friends;[45] and, from the French Ambassador, of the resolution imputed to the same statesman, to remove from his path every rival who seemed likely to jeopardize his tenure of power.[46]