Sir John disclaimed any personal jealousy in regard to Stanley’s appointment, but, within a week or two of the Earl’s departure, he already felt strong anxiety as to its probable results.  “If it prove no hindrance to the service,” he said, “it shall nothing trouble me.  I desire that my doings may show what I am; neither will I seek, by indirect means to calumniate him or any other, but will let them show themselves.”

Early in December he informed the Lord-Treasurer that Stanley’s own men were boasting that their master acknowledged no superior authority to his own, and that he had said as much himself to the magistracy of Deventer.  The burghers had already complained, through the constituted guardians of their liberties, of his insolence and rapacity, and of the turbulence of his troops, and had appealed to Sir John; but the colonel-general’s remonstrances had been received by Sir William with contumely and abuse, and by daunt that he had even a greater commission than any he had yet shown.

“Three sheep, an ox, and a whole hog,” were required weekly of the peasants for his table, in a time of great scarcity, and it was impossible to satisfy the rapacious appetites of the Irish kernes.  The paymaster-general of the English forces was daily appealed to by Stanley for funds—­an application which was certainly not unreasonable, as her Majesty’s troops had not received any payment for three months—­but there “was not a denier in the treasury,” and he was therefore implored to wait.  At last the States-General sent him a month’s pay for himself and all his troops, although, as he was in the Queen’s service, no claim could justly be made upon them.

Wilkes, also, as English member of the state council, faithfully conveyed to the governor-general in England the complaints which came up to all the authorities of the republic, against Sir William Stanley’s conduct in Deventer.  He had seized the keys of the gates, he kept possession of the towers and fortifications, he had meddled with the civil government, he had infringed all their privileges.  Yet this was the board of magistrates, expressly set up by Leicester, with the armed hand, by the agency of Marshal Pelham and this very Colonel Stanley—­a board of Calvinist magistrates placed but a few weeks before in power to control a city of Catholic tendencies.  And here was a papist commander displaying Leicester’s commission in their faces, and making it a warrant for dealing with the town as if it were under martial law, and as if he were an officer of the Duke of Parma.  It might easily be judged whether such conduct were likely to win the hearts of Netherlanders to Leicester and to England.