136 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book III. 



Robert Cecil, who attended her, knowing there were in it some 

 letters from his correspondents, with great presence of mind 

 called immediately for a knife to cut open the packet, that 

 a delay might not create suspicion. When he came to cut 

 it open, he told the queen it looked and smelt Edinboro'ish, 

 and therefore was proper to be opened and aired before she 

 saw what it contained ; to which her Majesty consented, 

 having an extreme aversion to bad smells. Upon the queen's 

 decease, Cecil was the first who publicly read her will, and 

 proclaimed James VI. of Scotland King of England ; and his 

 former services to that monarch, or the interest of Sir George 

 Hume, afterwards Earl of Dunbar, so effectually recommended 

 him to his Majesty, that he took him into the highest degree 

 of favour, and continued him in his office of principal minister ; 

 and though in that reign public affairs were not carried on 

 with the same spirit as in the last, the fault cannot justly be 

 charged on this minister, but on the king, whose timid temper 

 induced him to have peace with all the world, and especially 

 with Spain, at any price. But though Sir Robert Cecil was 

 far from approving, in his heart, the corrupt measures taken 

 for obtaining that inglorious peace, yet he so far ingratiated 

 himself with the British Solomon that he was raised to greater 

 honours : being on May 13, 1603, created Baron of Essenden, 

 county Rutland ; on August 20, 1604, Viscount Cranbourne, 

 county Dorset (the first nobleman of that degree who bore a 

 coronet) ; and on May 4, 1605, Earl of Salisbury. Upon 

 the death of Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, Lord High 

 Treasurer, in April, 1608, the Earl of Salisbury succeeded him 

 in that post ; and his advancement to it was universally 

 applauded, a great reformation being expected from him in 

 the Exchequer, which he accordingly effected. Finding it 

 almost exhausted, he devised several means for replenishing 

 it with money, particularly by causing the royal manors to be 

 surveyed, which before were but imperfectly known ; by 

 reviving the custody of Crown lands ; b}^ commissions of 

 assets ; by improving the customs from iJ^86,ooo to ^120,000 

 and afterwards to ;^ 135,000 per annum, and similar measures, 

 including the surrender of his patent of Master of the Wards 



