After twice putting back, through stress of weather, the commissioners, early in July, arrived at London, and were “lodged and very worshipfully appointed at charges of her Majesty in the Clothworkers’ Hall in Pynchon-lane, near Tower-street.”  About the Tower and its faubourgs the buildings were stated to be as elegant as they were in the city itself, although this was hardly very extravagant commendation.  From this district a single street led along the river’s strand to Westminster, where were the old and new palaces, the famous hall and abbey, the Parliament chambers, and the bridge to Southwark, built of stone, with twenty arches, sixty feet high, and with rows of shops and dwelling-houses on both its sides.  Thence, along the broad and beautiful river, were dotted here and there many stately mansions and villas, residences of bishops and nobles, extending farther and farther west as the city melted rapidly into the country.  London itself was a town lying high upon a hill—­the hill of Lud—­and consisted of a coil of narrow, tortuous, unseemly streets, each with a black, noisome rivulet running through its centre, and with rows of three-storied, leaden-roofed houses, built of timber-work filled in with lime, with many gables, and with the upper stories overhanging and darkening the basements.  There were one hundred and twenty-one churches, small and large, the most conspicuous of which was the Cathedral.  Old Saint Paul’s was not a very magnificent edifice—­but it was an extremely large one, for it was seven hundred and twenty feet long, one hundred and thirty broad, and had a massive quadrangular tower, two hundred and sixty feet high.  Upon this tower had stood a timber-steeple, rising, to a height of five hundred and thirty-four feet from the ground, but it had been struck by lightning in the year 1561, and consumed to the stone-work.

The Queen’s favourite residence was Greenwich Palace, the place of her birth, and to this mansion, on the 9th of July, the Netherland envoys were conveyed, in royal barges, from the neighbourhood of Pynchon-lane, for their first audience.

The deputation was a strong one.  There was Falck of Zeeland, a man of consummate adroitness, perhaps not of as satisfactory integrity; “a shrewd fellow and a fine,” as Lord Leicester soon afterwards characterised him.  There was Menin, pensionary of Dort, an eloquent and accomplished orator, and employed on this occasion as chief spokesman of the legation—­“a deeper man, and, I think, an honester,” said the same personage, adding, with an eye to business, “and he is but poor, which you must consider, but with great secrecy.”  There was Paul Buys, whom we have met with before; keen, subtle, somewhat loose of life, very passionate, a most most energetic and valuable friend to England, a determined foe to France, who had resigned the important post of Holland’s Advocate, when the mission offering sovereignty to Henry III. had been resolved upon, and who had since that period been most influential