than she could help, had been obliged to admit that informal transactions were pending, but had authorised the Secretary to assure the United States that no treaty would be made without their knowledge and full concurrence.  “She doth think,” wrote Walsingham to Leicester,” that you should, if you shall see no cause to the contrary, acquaint the council of state there that certain overtures of peace are daily made unto her, but that she meaneth not to proceed therein without their good liking and privity, being persuaded that there can no peace be made profitable or sure for her that shall not also stand with their safety; and she doth acknowledge hers to be so linked with theirs as nothing can fall out to their prejudice, but she must be partaker of their harm.”

This communication was dated on the 21st April, exactly three weeks after the Queen’s letter to Heneage, in which she had spoken of the “malicious bruits” concerning the pretended peace-negotiations; and the Secretary was now confirming, by her order, what she had then stated under her own hand, that she would “do nothing that might concern them without their own knowledge and good liking.”

And surely nothing could be more reasonable.  Even if the strict letter of the August treaty between the Queen and the States did not provide against any separate negotiations by the one party without the knowledge of the other, there could be no doubt at all that its spirit absolutely forbade the clandestine conclusion of a peace with Spain by England alone, or by the Netherlands alone, and that such an arrangement would be disingenuous, if not positively dishonourable.

Nevertheless it would almost seem that Elizabeth had been taking advantage of the day when she was writing her letter to Heneage on the 1st of April.  Never was painstaking envoy more elaborately trifled with.  On the 26th of the month—­and only five days after the communication by Walsingham just noticed—­the Queen was furious that any admission should have been made to the States of their right to participate with her in peace-negotiations.

“We find that Sir Thomas Heneage,” said she to Leicester, “hath gone further—­in assuring the States that we would make no peace without their privity and assent—­than he had commission; for that our direction was—­ if our meaning had been well set down, and not mistaken by our Secretary —­that they should have been only let understand that in any treaty that might pass between us and Spain, they might be well assured we would have no less care of their safety than of our own.”  Secretary Walsingham was not likely to mistake her Majesty’s directions in this or any other important affair of state.  Moreover, it so happened that the Queen had, in her own letter to Heneage, made the same statement which she now chose to disavow.  She had often a convenient way of making herself misunderstood, when she thought it desirable to shift responsibility from her own shoulders upon those of others; but upon this occasion she had been sufficiently explicit.  Nevertheless, a scape-goat was necessary, and unhappy the subordinate who happened to be within her Majesty’s reach when a vicarious sacrifice was to be made.  Sir Francis Walsingham was not a man to be brow-beaten or hood-winked, but Heneage was doomed to absorb a fearful amount of royal wrath.