ABSTRACT
Few policy-makers allow the historian to see the alignment between their intellectual processes and the ways in which they respond to the mundane demands of governance. Sir William Cecil, Principal Secretary to Queen Elizabeth, who became Lord Burghley in 1571, is one of those rare politicians who did. His copious notes and ruminations, scattered on hundreds of sheets through the State Papers and other Elizabethan collections, let us follow his concerns on an almost daily basis while allowing us to watch how he brought his education, his religion-his very world view —to bear on issues that he, the second most powerful person in England, found worthy of governmental attention.
