Leicester had been determined and consistent in this great enterprize from the beginning.  He felt intensely the importance of the crisis.  He saw that the time had come for swift and uncompromising action, and the impatience with which he bore the fetters imposed upon him may be easily conceived.

“The cause is such,” he wrote to Walsingham, “that I had as lief be dead as be in the case I shall be in if this restraint hold for taking the oath there, or if some more authority be not granted than I see her Majesty would I should have.  I trust you all will hold hard for this, or else banish me England withal.  I have sent you the books to be signed by her Majesty.  I beseech you return them with all haste, for I get no money till they be under seal.”

But her Majesty would not put them under her seal, much to the favourite’s discomfiture.

“Your letter yieldeth but cold answer,” he wrote, two days afterwards.  “Above all things yet that her Majesty doth stick at, I marvel most at her refusal to sign my book of assurance; for there passeth nothing in the earth against her profit by that act, nor any good to me but to satisfy the creditors, who were more scrupulous than needs.  I did complain to her of those who did refuse to lend me money, and she was greatly offended with them.  But if her Majesty were to stay this, if I were half seas over, I must of necessity come back again, for I may not go without money.  I beseech, if the matter be refused by her, bestow a post on me to Harwich.  I lie this night at Sir John Peters’, and but for this doubt I had been to-morrow at Harwich.  I pray God make you all that be counsellors plain and direct to the furtherance of all good service for her Majesty and the realm; and if it be the will of God to plague us that go, and you that tarry, for our sins, yet let us not be negligent to seek to please the Lord.”

The Earl was not negligent at any rate in seeking to please the Queen, but she was singularly hard to please.  She had never been so uncertain in her humours as at this important crisis.  She knew, and had publicly stated as much, that she was “embarking in a war with the greatest potentate in Europe;” yet now that the voyage had fairly commenced, and the waves were rolling around her, she seemed anxious to put back to the shore.  For there was even a whisper of peace-negotiations, than which nothing could have been more ill-timed.  “I perceive by your message,” said Leicester to Walsingham, “that your peace with Spain will go fast on, but this is not the way.”  Unquestionably it was not the way, and the whisper was, for the moment at least, suppressed.  Meanwhile Leicester had reached Harwich, but the post “bestowed on him,” contained, as usual, but cold comfort.  He was resolved, however, to go manfully forward, and do the work before him, until the enterprise should prove wholly impracticable.  It is by the light afforded by the secret never-published correspondence of the