The damage they were likely to inflict upon the enemy seemed very problematical, until they should have been improved by some wholesome ball-practice.  “They are so unskilful,” said Digger, “that if they should be carried to the field no better trained than yet they are, they would prove much more dangerous to their own leaders and companies than any ways serviceable on their enemies.  The hard and miserable estate of the soldiers generally, excepting officers, hath been such, as by the confessions of the captains themselves, they have been offered by many of their soldiers thirty and forty pounds a piece to be dismissed and sent away; whereby I doubt not the flower of the pressed English bands are gone, and the remnant supplied with such paddy persons as commonly, in voluntary procurements, men are glad to accept.”

Even after the expiration of four months the condition of the paddy persons continued most destitute.  The English soldiers became mere barefoot starving beggars in the streets, as had never been the case in the worst of times, when the States were their paymasters.  The little money brought from the treasury by the Earl, and the large sums which he had contributed out of his own pocket, had been spent in settling, and not fully settling, old scores.  “Let me entreat you,” wrote Leicester to Walsingham, “to be a mean to her Majesty, that the poor soldiers be not beaten for my sake.  There came no penny of treasure over since my coming hither.  That which then came was most part due before it came.  There is much still due.  They cannot get a penny, their credit is spent, they perish for want of victuals and clothing in great numbers.  The whole are ready to mutiny.  They cannot be gotten out to service, because they cannot discharge the debts they owe in the places where they are.  I have let of my own more than I may spare.”—­“There was no soldier yet able to buy himself a pair of hose,” said the Earl again, “and it is too, too great shame to see how they go, and it kills their hearts to show themselves among men.”

There was no one to dispute the Earl’s claims.  The Nassau family was desperately poor, and its chief, young Maurice, although he had been elected stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, had every disposition—­as Sir Philip upon his arrival in Flushing immediately informed his uncle—­to submit to the authority of the new governor.  Louisa de Coligny, widow of William the Silent, was most anxious for the English alliance, through which alone she believed that the fallen fortunes of the family could be raised.  It was thus only, she thought, that the vengeance for which she thirsted upon the murderers of her father and her husband could be obtained.  “We see now,” she wrote to Walsingham, in a fiercer strain than would seem to comport with so gentle a nature—­deeply wronged as the daughter of Coligny and the wife of Orange had been by Papists—­“we see now the effects of our God’s promises.  He knows when it pleases Him to avenge the blood of