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His original plan of life was disclosed in his letter to Lord Burghley: to get some office with an assured income and not much work, and then to devote the best of his time to his own subjects.
He sent copies of it to Burghley, to Lady Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, to Lords Southampton, Montjoy, and Harris, to Sir Robert Sidney, Sir Henry Unton, and many other personages of the English court, accompanying them with letters gracefully written and melancholy in spirit.
Nevertheless it was hardly three weeks after they had been despatched when Walsingham and Burghley found, her Majesty one morning a towering passion, because, the Earl had not already laid down the government. The Lord Treasurer ventured to remonstrate, but was bid to bold his tongue.
If he could have relied on her support, or if the Guises had been somewhat less dangerous, he would have been ready to strike; but his distrust of the English Queen was too justifiably complete. She was in fact saved from the absolute necessity of yielding to the persuasions of Burghley and Walsingham only by the dogged tenacity with which the Hollanders held out.
If Bacon should marry the famous beauty and become possessed of her large fortune, there was no saying, thought the Cecils, but that he might attain to such an exalted position as to put their own precocious Robert in the shade. Bridget had not been in her grave four months when the great Lord Burghley died.
It was also decided that Parliament should be immediately summoned, in which, besides the request of a subsidy, many other necessary, provisions should be made for her Majesty's safety. "The conclusions of the whole," said Lord Burghley, with much earnestness, "was this.
"As to the proposal made to you," wrote Burghley, "by the mouth of Leoninus, her Majesty hath been informed that you had thanked them in her name, and alledged that there was no such thing in the contract, and that therefore you could not accept nor knew how to answer the same." Now this information was obviously far from correct, although it had been furnished by the Earl himself to Burghley.
In particular, Williams urged rapid action, and there is little doubt, that had the counsels of prompt, quick-witted, ready-handed soldiers like himself, and those who thought with him, been taken; had the stealthy but quick-darting policy of Walsingham prevailed over the solemn and stately but somewhat ponderous proceedings of Burghley, both Ghent and Antwerp might have been saved, the trifling and treacherous diplomacy of Catharine de' Medici neutralized, and an altogether more fortunate aspect given at once to the state of Protestant affairs.
Having painted this dismal picture of the probable termination to his career not in the hope of melting Burghley but of touching the heart of Elizabeth he proceeded to argue the point in question with much logic and sagacity.
It was obviously composed through the inspiration of Walsingham rather than that of Burghley. The letter, brought by a certain Grafigni and a certain Bodman, she said, was a very strange one, and written under a delusion.
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