The deputies conferred apart for a little while, and then replied that the proposition made by Utrecht was notoriously factious, illegal, and altogether futile.  Without the sanction of all the United States, of what value was the declaration of Utrecht?  Moreover the charter of that province had been recklessly violated, its government overthrown, and its leading citizens banished.  The action of the Province under such circumstances was not deserving of comment; but should it appear that her Majesty was desirous of assuming the sovereignty of the Provinces upon reasonable conditions, the States of Holland and of Zeeland would not be found backward in the business.

Leicester proposed that Prince Maurice of Nassau should go with him to England, as nominal chief of the embassy, and some of the deputies favoured the suggestion.  It was however, vigorously and successfully opposed by Barneveld, who urged that to leave the country without a head in such a dangerous position of affairs, would be an act of madness.  Leicester was much annoyed when informed of this decision.  He was suspected of a design, during his absence, of converting Maurice entirely to his own way of thinking.  If unsuccessful, it was believed by the Advocate and by many others that the Earl would cause the young Prince to be detained in England as long as Philip William, his brother, had been kept in Spain.  He observed peevishly that he knew how it had all been brought about.

Words, of course, and handsome compliments were exchanged between the Governor and the States-General on his departure.  He protested that he had never pursued any private ends during his administration, but had ever sought to promote the good of the country and the glory of the Queen, and that he had spent three hundred thousand florins of his own money in the brief period of his residence there.

The Advocate, on part of the States, assured him that they were all aware that in the friendship of England lay their only chance of salvation, but that united action was the sole means by which that salvation could be effected, and the one which had enabled the late Prince of Orange to maintain a contest unequalled by anything recorded in history.  There was also much disquisition on the subject of finance—­the Advocate observing that the States now raised as much in a month as the Provinces in the time of the Emperor used to levy in a year—­and expressed the hope that the Queen would increase her contingent to ten thousand foot, and two thousand horse.  He repudiated, in the name of the States-General and his own, the possibility of peace-negotiations; deprecated any allusion to the subject as fatal to their religion, their liberty, their very existence, and equally disastrous to England and to Protestantism, and implored the Earl, therefore, to use all his influence in opposition to any pacific overtures to or from Spain.

On the 24th November, acts were drawn up and signed by the Earl, according to which the supreme government of the United Netherlands was formally committed to the state-council during his absence.  Decrees were to be pronounced in the name of his Excellency, and countersigned by Maurice of Nassau.