for the Netherlands, and to patch up a hurried and unsatisfactory, if not a disgraceful peace; and this, with the concurrence of her Majesty.  After their plots had been discovered by the vigilant Secretary of State, there was a disposition to discredit the humbler instruments in the cabal.  Elizabeth was not desirous of peace.  Far from it.  She was qualmish at the very suggestion.  Dire was her wrath against Bodman, De Loo, Graafigni, and the rest, at their misrepresentations on the subject.  But she would “lend her ear.”  And that royal ear was lent, and almost fatal was the distilment poured into its porches.  The pith and marrow of the great Netherland enterprise was sapped by the slow poison of the ill-timed negotiation.  The fruit of Drake’s splendid triumphs in America was blighted by it.  The stout heart of the vainglorious but courageous Leicester was sickened by it, while, meantime, the maturing of the great armada-scheme, by which the destruction of England was to be accomplished, was furthered, through the unlimited procrastination so precious to the heart of Philip.

Fortunately the subtle Walsingham was there upon the watch to administer the remedy before it was quite too late; and to him England and the Netherlands were under lasting obligations.  While Alexander and Philip suspected a purpose on the part of the English government to deceive them, they could not help observing that the Earl of Leicester was both deserted and deceived.  Yet it had been impossible for the peace-party in the government wholly to conceal their designs, when such prating fellows as Grafigni and De Loo were employed in what was intended to be a secret negotiation.  In vain did the friends of Leicester in the Netherlands endeavour to account for the neglect with which he was treated, and for the destitution of his army.  Hopelessly did they attempt to counteract those “advertisements of most fearful instance,” as Richard Cavendish expressed himself, which were circulating everywhere.

Thanks to the babbling of the very men, whose chief instructions had been to hold their tongues, and to listen with all their ears, the secret negotiations between Parma and the English counsellors became the town-talk at Antwerp, the Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, London.  It is true that it was impossible to know what was actually said and done; but that there was something doing concerning which Leicester was not to be informed was certain.  Grafigni, during one of his visits to the obedient provinces, brought a brace of greyhounds and a couple of horses from England, as a present to Alexander, and he perpetually went about, bragging to every one of important negotiations which he was conducting, and of his intimacy with great personages in both countries.  Leicester, on the other hand, was kept in the dark.  To him Grafigni made no communications, but he once sent him a dish of plums, “which,” said the Earl, with superfluous energy, “I will boldly