of application, and by an exemplary spirit of order. His
morals were regular; his sense of religion habitual, profound, and
operative. In his declining age, harassed by diseases and cares and
saddened by the loss of a beloved wife, the worthy sharer of his inmost
counsels, he became peevish and irascible; but his heart was good; in
all the domestic relations he was indulgent and affectionate; in his
friendships tender and faithful, nor could he be accused of pride, of
treachery, or of vindictiveness. Rising as he did by the strength of his
own merits, unaided by birth or connexions, he seems to have early
formed the resolution, more prudent indeed than generous, of attaching
himself to no political leader, so closely as to be entangled in his
fall. Thus he deserted his earliest patron, protector Somerset, on a
change of fortune, and is even said to have drawn the articles of
impeachment against him.

He extricated himself with adroitness from the ruin of Northumberland,
by whom he had been much employed and trusted; and at some expense of
protestant consistency contrived to escape persecution, though not to
hold office, under the rule of Mary. Towards the queen his mistress, his
demeanor was obsequious to the brink of servility; he seems on no
occasion to have hesitated on the execution of any of her commands; and
the kind of tacit compromise by which he and Leicester, in spite of
their mutual animosity, were enabled for so long a course of years to
hold divided empire in the cabinet, could not have been maintained
without a general acquiescence on the part of Burleigh in the various
malversations and oppressions of that guilty minion.

Another accusation brought against him is that of taking money for
ecclesiastical preferments. Of the truth of this charge, sufficient
evidence might be brought from original documents; but an apologist
would urge with justice that his royal mistress, who virtually delegated
to him the most laborious duties of the office of head of the church,
both expected and desired that emolument should thence accrue to him and
to the persons under him. Thus we find it stated that bishop Fletcher
had "bestowed in allowances and gratifications to divers attendants
about her majesty, since his preferment to the see of London, the sum of
thirty one hundred pounds or there abouts; which money was given by
him, for the most part of it, by her majesty's direction and special
appointment[122]."

[Note 1