Accordingly the Earl, after despatching an equally ill-tempered letter to the States, in which he alluded, at unmerciful length, to all the old grievances, blamed them for the loss of Sluys, for which place he protested that they had manifested no more interest than if it had been San Domingo in Hispaniola, took his departure for Flushing.  After remaining there, in a very moody frame of mind, for several days, expecting that the States would, at least, send a committee to wait upon him and receive his farewells, he took leave of them by letter.  “God send me shortly a wind to blow me from them all,” he exclaimed—­a prayer which was soon granted—­and before the end of the year he was safely landed in England.  “These legs of mine,” said he, clapping his hands upon them as he sat in his chamber at Margate, “shall never go again into Holland.  Let the States get others to serve their mercenary turn, for me they shall not have.”  Upon giving up the government, he caused a medal to be struck in his own honour.  The device was a flock of sheep watched by an English mastiff.  Two mottoes—­“non gregem aed ingratos,” and “invitus desero”—­expressed his opinion of Dutch ingratitude and his own fidelity.  The Hollanders, on their part, struck several medals to commemorate the same event, some of which were not destitute of invention.  Upon one of them, for instance, was represented an ape smothering her young ones to death in her embrace, with the device, “Libertas ne its chara ut simiae catuli;” while upon the reverse was a man avoiding smoke and falling into the fire, with the inscription, “Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem.”

Leicester found the usual sunshine at Greenwich.  All the efforts of Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst, had been insufficient to raise even a doubt in Elizabeth’s mind as to the wisdom and integrity by which his administration of the Provinces had been characterised from beginning to end.  Those who had appealed from his hatred to the justice of their sovereign, had met with disgrace and chastisement.  But for the great Earl; the Queen’s favour was a rock of adamant.  At a private interview he threw himself at her feet, and with tears and sobs implored her not to receive him in disgrace whom she had sent forth in honour.  His blandishments prevailed, as they had always done.  Instead, therefore, of appearing before the council, kneeling, to answer such inquiries as ought surely to have been instituted, he took his seat boldly among his colleagues, replying haughtily to all murmurs by a reference to her Majesty’s secret instructions.

The unhappy English soldiers, who had gone forth under his banner in midsummer, had been returning, as they best might, in winter, starving, half-naked wretches, to beg a morsel of bread at the gates of Greenwich palace, and to be driven away as vagabonds, with threats of the stock.  This was not the fault of the Earl, for he had fed them with his own generous hand in the Netherlands, week after week, when no money for their necessities could be obtained from the paymasters.  Two thousand pounds had been sent by Elizabeth to her soldiers when sixty-four thousand pounds arrearage were due, and no language could exaggerate the misery to which these outcasts, according to eye-witnesses of their own nation, were reduced.