What could be more hopeless than such negotiations?  What more dreary than the perpetual efforts of two lines to approach each other which were mathematically incapable of meeting?  That the young republic, conscious of her daily growing strength, should now seek refuge from her nobly won independence in the protectorate of Albert, who was himself the vassal of Philip, was an idea almost inconceivable to the Dutch mind.  Yet so impossible was it for the archdukes to put themselves into human relations with this new and popular Government, that in the inmost recesses of their breasts they actually believed themselves, when making the offer, to be performing a noble act of Christian charity.

The efforts of Jeannin and of the English ambassador were now unremitting, and thoroughly seconded by Barneveld.  Maurice was almost at daggers drawn, not only with the Advocate but with the foreign envoys.  Sir Ralph Winwood, who had, in virtue of the old treaty arrangements with England, a seat in the state-council at the Hague, and who was a man of a somewhat rough and insolent deportment, took occasion at a session of that body, when the prince was present, to urge the necessity of at once resuming the ruptured negotiations.  The King of Great Britain; he said, only recommended a course which he was himself always ready to pursue.  Hostilities which were necessary, and no others, were just.  Such, and such only, could be favoured by God or by pious kings.  But wars were not necessary which could be honourably avoided.  A truce was not to be despised, by which religious liberty and commerce were secured, and it was not the part of wisdom to plunge into all the horrors of immediate war in order to escape distant and problematical dangers; that might arise when the truce should come to an end.  If a truce were now made, the kings of both France and England would be guarantees for its faithful observance.  They would take care that no wrong or affront was offered to the States-General.

Maurice replied, with a sneer, to these sententious commonplaces derived at second-hand from King James that great kings were often very indifferent to injuries sustained by their friends.  Moreover, there was an eminent sovereign, he continued, who was even very patient under affronts directly offered to himself.  It was not very long since a horrible plot had been discovered to murder the King of England, with his wife, his children, and all the great personages of the realm.  That this great crime had been attempted under the immediate instigation of the King of Spain was notorious to the whole world, and certainly no secret to King James.  Yet his Britannic Majesty had made haste to exonerate the great criminal from all complicity in the crime; and had ever since been fawning upon the Catholic king, and hankering for a family alliance with him.  Conduct like this the prince denounced in plain terms as cringing and cowardly, and expressed the opinion that guarantees of Dutch independence from such a monarch could hardly be thought very valuable.