68 THE CECILS
Burghley still endeavoured to exert his diplo- macy in the cause of peace, but his efforts were continually thwarted by Leicester and his party, who longed for war and plunder. When war could no longer be postponed, and reports of Spanish preparations caused anxiety and alarm in England, he remained calm and confident. " His courage never failed, "says his domestic biographer. " In times of greatest danger he ever spake most cheerfully, and when some did often talk fearfully of the greatness of our enemies and of their power and possibility to harm us, he would ever answer, ' they shall do no more than God will suffer them.' ' As usual in a crisis the Queen drove her ministers distracted by her parsimony, her irritability, and her vacillation ; and it was well for the country that a man of Burghley's imper- turbable composure was at the head of the Govern- ment. The lion's share of the work of organising the defence fell to him, and in spite of constant illness so that, as he wrote to Walsingham, " I have no mind towards anything but to groan with my pain " he was engaged in unremitting labour until the defeat of the Armada relieved the immediate strain.
Shortly afterwards the death of Leicester removed his life-long rival. Two years later Walsingham, the other chief member of the aggressive party, though a statesman of a very different type, also died, leaving Burghley and his friends predominant in the Council.
Death had also been busy in his family circle.
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