As lord treasurer Salisbury showed considerable financial ability. In 1608 he imposed new duties on articles of luxury and those of foreign manufacture which competed with English goods, while lowering the dues on currants and tobacco. By this measure, and by a more careful collection, the ordinary income was raised to £460,000, while £700,000 was paid off the debt, leaving at the beginning of 16io the sum of £300,000. But the minister's efforts were nullified by the extravagances of James, who continued to exceed his income. Salisbury erred, as the sequel was to show, in forcing the king's legal right to levy impositions against the remonstrances of the parliament. In the "great contract," the scheme now put forward by Salisbury for settling the finances, his lack of political wisdom was still more apparent. The Com mons were to guarantee a fixed annual subsidy, on condition of the abandonment of impositions and of the redress of grievances by the king. An unworthy and undignified system of higgling and haggling was initiated between the crown and the parlia ment.
Salisbury had always been averse to prosecution for religion, and he made the offer in October 1607 that if the pope would excommunicate those that rebelled against the king and oblige them to defend him against invasion, the fines for recusancy would be remitted and they would be allowed to keep priests in their houses. This was a fair measure of toleration. But his attitude to the Nonconformists was identical with that after wards maintained by Laud; he maintained that "unity in belief cannot be preserved unless it is to be found in worship." Elizabeth and James found security in Salisbury's calm good sense, safe, orderly official mind and practical experience of busi ness, of which there was no guarantee in the restlessness of Essex, the enterprise of Raleigh or the speculation of Bacon. On the
other hand, he was neither guided nor inspired by any great principle or ideal, he contributed nothing towards the settlement of the great national problems, and he precipitated by his ill advised action the struggle between crown and parliament.
Lord Salisbury died on May 24, 1612, at the parsonage house at Marlborough. During his long political career he had amassed a large fortune, besides inheriting a considerable portion of Lord Burghley's landed estate. In 1607 he exchanged, at the king's request, his estate of Theobalds in Hertfordshire for Hatfield. Here he built the magnificent house of which he himself conceived the plans and the design, but which he did not live to inhabit, its completion almost coinciding with his death. In person and figure he was in strange contrast with his rivals at court, being diminutive in stature, ill-f ormed and weak in health. Elizabeth styled him her pygmy; his enemies delighted in vilifying his "wry neck," "crooked back" and "splay foot." He married Eliza beth, daughter of William Brooke, 5th Baron Cobham, by whom, besides one daughter, he had William (1591-1668), his successor as 2nd earl.
No complete life of Robert Cecil has been attempted, but the materials for it are very extensive, including Hist. MSS. Comm. Series, Marquis of Salisbury's MSS. (superseding former reports in the series), from which MSS. selections were published in 174o by S. Haynes, by Wm. Murdin in 1759, by John Bruce, in The Corre spondence of King James VI. with Sir Robert Cecil, in 1861 (Camden Society) , and by Ed. Lodge, in Illustrations of English History, in 1838. Some of his writings are printed in the Harleian Miscellanies and the Somers Tracts.