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Updated: June 17, 2025
Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, an able and ambitious man, counted on her rise to set him at the head of the council-board; the brilliant group of young courtiers to which her brother belonged saw in her success their own elevation; and the Duke of Suffolk with the bulk of the nobles hoped through her means to bring about the ruin of the statesman before whom they trembled.
He was a glutton of work. He was born to write despatches, and to scrawl comments upon those which he received. Rapport a M. le Minist. de l'Interieur, prefixed to corresp. Philippe II. Vol. I. xlix. note 1. He often remained at the council-board four or five hours at a time, and he lived in his cabinet.
"With all deference, Most Gracious Princess," said the herald, "the subject-matter of my message is such that it should be communicated privately, or at Your Highness's council-board." "If you have a message from my good uncle, King Edward, deliver it here and now," said the princess. "As you will, Most Gracious Princess," said the herald.
Associated on equal terms, in war, with the experience of Howard and the genius of Raleigh, at the Council-board with the astute and consummately trained Cecil, petted and spoiled by the elderly Queen as she had spoiled no one since the days of Leicester's youth, a public favourite by reason of his undoubted courage and his popular habits, Essex, young as he was, had long imagined himself the greatest man in the kingdom, chafing at every favour bestowed on a rival, and treating men who knew themselves his superiors with intolerable arrogance.
While she ordered Catholic images to be flung into the fire, she quizzed the Puritans as "brethren in Christ." But she had no sort of religious aversion from either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled at the Catholic nobles whom she admitted to the presence. The Catholics grumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom she called to her council-board.
The Roman Catholic Church was all powerful at the council-board as well as in the parish. In the past as in the present century, a large Roman Catholic church rose, the most prominent building in every town and village, illustrating its dominating influence in the homes of every community of the province.
At her council-board she was an entirely different woman from what she was among her courtiers: there she would tolerate no flattery, and was controlled only by reason and good sense, as practical as Burleigh himself, and as hard-working and business-like; cold, intellectual, and clear-headed, utterly without enthusiasm.
"No War, my Lords," the Queen used to cry imperiously at the council-board, "No War!" but her hatred of war sprang not so much from aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, as from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic manoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled.
The "Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, still recalls Peter of Savoy who arrived five years later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's council-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on Archbishop Edmund's death to the highest post in the realm save the Crown itself, the Archbishoprick of Canterbury.
The business-like Pepys discovered, as he brought his work to the Council-board, that "the king do mind nothing but pleasures, and hates the very sight or thoughts of business." That Charles had great natural parts no one doubted. In his earlier days of defeat and danger he showed a cool courage and presence of mind which never failed him in the many perilous moments of his reign.
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