the chief functions of that Court in its
relation to wards in Chancery, and also to have monopolised its
privileges. We may infer that this was a position by no means
distasteful to that prudent minister's provident and nepotic spirit.
Burghley was essentially of that type of statesmen who are better
contented with actual power, and its accruing profits, than the
appearance of power and the glory of its trappings. Leicester, Raleigh,
and Essex might, in turn, pose their day as they willed upon the
political stage so long as they confined themselves to subordinate or
ornamental capacities; but whenever they attempted seriously to encroach
upon the reins of power, he set himself to circumvent them with a
patience and finesse that invariably wrought their undoing.

In this system of politics he had an apt pupil in his son, Sir Robert
Cecil, who, viewed through the ages, while presenting a less solid
figure than his father, displays a much more refined and Machiavellian
craft.

The attention and care which Burghley bestowed from the beginning upon
his young ward's affairs bespeak an interest within an interest when his
prudent and calculating nature is borne in mind and the later incidents
of his guardianship are considered.

Towards the end of 1585, at the age of twelve, Southampton became a
student of St. John's College, Cambridge, from whence he graduated as
M.A. about four years later, _i.e._ in June 1589. After leaving
Cambridge in 1589, _he lived for over a year with his mother at Cowdray
House in Sussex_. Early in this year, or possibly while Southampton was
still at Cambridge, Burghley had opened negotiations with the Countess
of Southampton with the object of uniting the interests and fortunes of
her son with his own house, by consummating a marriage between this
wealthy and promising young peer and his own granddaughter, Lady
Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. Burghley's extreme
interest in the match is fully attested by a few letters that are still
extant. In the Calendar State Papers we have an apologetic letter from
Sir Thomas Stanhope (whose wife and daughter had recently visited Lady
Southampton at Cowdray) to Lord Burghley, dated 15th July 1590, assuring
him that he had never sought to procure the young Earl of Southampton in
marriage for his daughter, as he knew Burghley intended marriage between
him and the Lady Vere. That an actual engagement of marriage had already
been entered into, we h