Leicester, upon the same occasion, addressed a letter to Burghley and Walsingham, expressing himself as became a crushed and contrite man, never more to raise his drooping head again, but warmly and manfully urging upon the attention of the English government—­for the honour and interest of the Queen herself—­“the miserable state of the poor soldiers.”  The necessity of immediate remittances in order to keep them from starving, was most imperious.  For himself, he was smothering his wretchedness until he should learn her Majesty’s final decision, as to what was to become of him.  “Meantime,” said he, “I carry my grief inward, and will proceed till her Majesty’s full pleasure come with as little discouragement to the cause as I can.  I pray God her Majesty may do that may be best for herself.  For my own part my, heart is broken, but not by the enemy.”

There is no doubt that the public disgrace thus inflicted upon the broken-hearted governor, and the severe censure administered to the States by the Queen were both ill-timed and undeserved.  Whatever his disingenuousness towards Davison, whatever his disobedience to Elizabeth, however ambitious his own secret motives may, have been, there is no doubt at all that thus far he had borne himself well in his great office.

Richard Cavendish—­than whom few had better opportunities of judging—­ spoke in strong language on the subject.  “It is a thing almost incredible,” said he, “that the care and diligence of any, one man living could, in so small time; have so much repaired so disjointed and loose an estate as my Lord found this country, in.  But lest he should swell in pride of that his good success, your Lordship knoweth that God hath so tempered the cause with the construction thereof, as may well hold him in good consideration of human things.”  He alluded with bitterness—­as did all men in the Netherlands who were not open or disguised Papists—­to the fatal rumours concerning the peace-negotiation in connection with the recall of Leicester.  “There be here advertisements of most fearful instance,” he said, “namely, that Champagny doth not spare most liberally to bruit abroad that he hath in his hands the conditions of peace offered by her Majesty unto the King his master, and that it is in his power to conclude at pleasure—­which fearful and mischievous plot, if in time it be not met withal by some notable encounter, it cannot but prove the root of great ruin.”

The “false boys” about Leicester were indefatigable in spreading these rumours, and in taking advantage—­with the assistance of the Papists in the obedient Provinces and in England—­of the disgraced condition in which the Queen had placed the favourite.  Most galling to the haughty Earl—­most damaging to the cause of England, Holland, and, liberty—­were the tales to his discredit, which circulated on the Bourse at Antwerp, Middelburg, Amsterdam, and in all the other commercial centres.  The most influential