Parma was right when he said that all confidence of the Netherlanders in the Englishmen would now be gone, and that the Provinces would begin to doubt their best friends.  No fresh treasons followed, but they were expected every day.  An organized plot to betray the country was believed in, and a howl of execration swept through the land.  The noble deeds of Sidney and Willoughby, and Norris and Pelham, and Roger Williams, the honest and valuable services of Wilkes, the generosity and courage of Leicester, were for a season forgotten.  The English were denounced in every city and village of the Netherlands as traitors and miscreants.  Respectable English merchants went from hostelry to hostelry, and from town to town, and were refused a lodging for love or money.  The nation was put under ban.  A most melancholy change from the beginning of the year, when the very men who were now loudest in denunciation and fiercest in hate, had been the warmest friends of Elizabeth, of England, and of Leicester.

At Hohenlo’s table the opinion was loudly expressed, even in the presence of Sir Roger Williams, that it was highly improbable, if a man like Stanley, of such high rank in the kingdom of England, of such great connections and large means, could commit such a treason, that he could do so without the knowledge and consent of her Majesty.

Barneveld, in council of state, declared that Leicester, by his restrictive letter of 24th November, had intended to carry the authority over the republic into England, in order to dispose of everything at his pleasure, in conjunction with the English cabinet-council, and that the country had never been so cheated by the French as it had now been by the English, and that their government had become insupportable.

Councillor Carl Roorda maintained at the table of Elector Truchsess that the country had fallen ‘de tyrannide in tyrrannidem;’ and—­if they had spurned the oppression of the Spaniards and the French—­that it was now time to, rebel against the English.  Barneveld and Buys loudly declared that the Provinces were able to protect themselves without foreign assistance, and that it was very injurious to impress a contrary opinion upon the public mind.

The whole college of the States-General came before the state-council, and demanded the name of the man to whom the Earl’s restrictive letter had been delivered—­that document by which the governor had dared surreptitiously to annul the authority which publicly he had delegated to that body, and thus to deprive it of the power of preventing anticipated crimes.  After much colloquy the name of Brackel was given, and, had not the culprit fortunately been absent, his life might have, been in danger, for rarely had grave statesmen been so thoroughly infuriated.