ser--a tie that continued for forty
years and was only sundered by death. Cecil was afterwards made Lord
Burghley, and the confidence thus first reposed in him within the hall
that was afterwards to become the home of his descendants was most
remarkable. "No arts," writes Lord Macaulay, "could shake the confidence
which she reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of
Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex, touched
the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman, but no rival could deprive
the treasurer of the place which he possessed in the favor of the queen.
She sometimes chid him sharply, but he was the man whom she delighted to
honor. For Burghley she forgot her usual parsimony, both of wealth and
dignities; for Burghley she relaxed that severe etiquette to which she
was unreasonably attached. Every other person to whom she addressed her
speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye fell, instantly sank on
his knee. For Burghley alone a chair was set in her presence, and there
the old minister, by birth only a plain Lincolnshire esquire, took his
ease, while the haughty heirs of the Fitzalans and De Veres humbled
themselves to the dust around him. At length, having survived all his
early coadjutors and rivals, he died, full of years and honors."

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH'S OAK, HATFIELD.]

[Illustration: HATFIELD HOUSE.]

But it was not until after his death that Hatfield came into possession
of his family. He built Burghley House near Stamford in Lincolnshire,
and left it to his younger son, Sir Robert Cecil. After Elizabeth's
death, King James I. expressed a preference for Burghley over Hatfield,
and an exchange was made by which Hatfield passed into possession of Sir
Robert, who had succeeded his father as chief minister, and, though in
weak health and of small stature, was a wise and faithful servant of the
queen and of her successor. In Elizabeth's last illness, when she
persisted in sitting propped up on a stool by pillows, he urged her to
rest herself, and inadvertently said she "must go to bed." The queen
fired up. "Must!" cried she. "Is _must_ a word to be addressed to
princes? Little man, little man, thy father if he had been alive durst
not have used that word." Sir Robert did not survive the queen many
years, and to him King James's peaceful succession to the throne is said
to have been greatly due. The king made him the Earl of Salisbury, and
the title descend