whenever they liked to make it, and affirming that Leicester’s opinions were of no account whatever.  Elizabeth’s coldness to the Earl and to the Netherlands was affirmed to be the Prince of Parma’s sheet-anchor; while meantime a house was ostentatiously prepared in Brussels by their direction for the reception of an English ambassador, who was every moment expected to arrive.  Under such circumstances it was in, vain for the governor-general to protest that the accounts of secret negotiations were false, and quite natural that the States should lose their confidence in the Queen.  An unfriendly and suspicious attitude towards her representative was a necessary result, and the demonstrations against the common enemy became still more languid.  But for these underhand dealings, Grave, Venlo, and Neusz, might have been saved, and the current ’of the Meuse and Rhine have remained in the hands of the patriots.

The Earl was industrious, generous, and desirous of playing well his part.  His personal courage was undoubted, and, in the opinion of his admirers—­themselves, some of them, men of large military experience—­his ability as a commander was of a high order.  The valour displayed by the English nobles and gentlemen who accompanied him was magnificent, worthy the descendants of the victors at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; and the good behaviour of their followers—­with a few rare exceptions—­had been equally signal.  But now the army was dwindling to a ghastly array of scarecrows, and the recruits, as they came from England, were appalled by the spectacle presented by their predecessors.  “Our old ragged rogues here have so discouraged our new men,” said Leicester; “as I protest to you they look like dead men.”  Out of eleven hundred freshly-arrived Englishmen, five hundred ran away in two days.  Some were caught and hanged, and all seemed to prefer hanging to remaining in the service, while the Earl declared that he would be hanged as well rather than again undertake such a charge without being assured payment for his troops beforehand!

The valour of Sidney and Essex, Willoughby and Pelham, Roger Williams and Martin Schenk, was set at nought by such untoward circumstances.  Had not Philip also left his army to starve and Alexander Farnese to work miracles, it would have fared still worse with Holland and England, and with the cause of civil and religious liberty in the year 1586.

The States having resumed, as much as possible; their former authority, were on very unsatisfactory terms with the governor-general.  Before long, it was impossible for the, twenty or thirty individuals called the States to be in the same town with the man whom, at the commencement of the, year, they had greeted so warmly.  The hatred between the Leicester faction and the municipalities became intense, for the foundation of the two great parties which were long to divide the Netherland commonwealth was already laid.  The mercantile patrician interest, embodied in the