igh church-of-England man. The circumstance also of his
devoting during his lifetime a considerable sum of ready money, which
he could ill spare, to the endowment of a hospital, has much the air of
an act of expiation prompted by religious fears. As a statesman
Leicester appears to have displayed on some occasions considerable
acuteness and penetration, but in the higher kind of wisdom he was
utterly deficient. His moral insensibility sometimes caused him to offer
to his sovereign the most pernicious counsels; and had not the superior
rectitude of Burleigh's judgement interposed, his influence might have
inflicted still deeper wounds on the honor of the queen and the
prosperity of the nation.

Towards his own friends and adherents he is said to have been a
religious observer of his promises; a virtue very remarkable in such a
man. In the midst of that profusion which rendered him rapacious, he was
capable of acts of real generosity, and both soldiers and scholars
tasted largely of his bounty. That he was guilty of many detestable acts
of oppression, and pursued with secret and unrelenting vengeance such as
offended his arrogance by any failure in the servile homage which he
made it his glory to exact, are charges proved by undeniable facts; but
it has already been observed that the more atrocious of the crimes
popularly imputed to him, remain, and must ever remain, matters of
suspicion rather than proof.

His conduct during the younger part of life was scandalously licentious:
latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days
of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his
cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later
period the stream of her bounty ran low; and following the natural bent
of her disposition, or complying with the necessity of her affairs, she
compelled him to mortgage to her his barony of Denbigh for the expenses
of his last expedition to Holland. Immediately after his death she also
caused his effects to be sold by auction, for the satisfaction of
certain demands of her treasury. From these circumstances it may
probably be inferred, that the influence which Leicester still retained
over her was secured rather by the chain of habit than the tie of
affection; and after the first shock of final separation from him whom
she had so long loved and trusted, it is not improbable that she might
contemplate the event with a feeling somewhat akin