enemies.  He was not only to grapple with a rapidly developing opposition in the States, but he was surrounded with masked enemies, whom he had brought with him from England.  Every act and word of his were liable to closest scrutiny, and likely to be turned against him.  For it was most characteristic of that intriguing age, that even the astute Walsingham, who had an eye and an ear at every key-hole in Europe, was himself under closest domestic inspection.  There was one Poley, a trusted servant of Lady Sidney, then living in the house of her father Walsingham, during Sir Philip’s absence, who was in close communication with Lord Montjoy’s brother, Blount, then high in favour of Queen Elizabeth—­“whose grandmother she might be for his age and hers”—­and with another brother Christopher Blount, at that moment in confidential attendance upon Lord Leicester in Holland.  Now Poley, and both the Blounts, were, in reality, Papists, and in intimate correspondence with the agents of the Queen of Scots, both at home and abroad, although “forced to fawn upon Leicester, to see if they might thereby live quiet.”  They had a secret “alphabet,” or cipher, among them, and protested warmly, that they “honoured the ground whereon Queen Mary trod better than Leicester with all his generation; and that they felt bound to serve her who was the only saint living on the earth.”

It may be well understood then that the Earl’s position was a slippery one, and that great assumption might be unsafe.  “He taketh the matter upon him,” wrote Morgan to the Queen of Scots, “as though he were an absolute king; but he hath many personages about him of good place out of England, the best number whereof desire nothing more than his confusion.  Some of them be gone with him to avoid the persecution for religion in England.  My poor advice and labour shall not be wanting to give Leicester all dishonour, which will fall upon him in the end with shame enough; though for the present he be very strong.”  Many of these personages of good place, and enjoying “charge and credit” with the Earl had very serious plans in their heads.  Some of them meant “for the service of God, and the advantage of the King of Spain, to further the delivery of some notable towns in Holland and Zeeland to the said King and his ministers,” and we are like to hear of these individuals again.

Meantime, the Earl of Leicester was at the Hague.  Why was he there?  What was his work?  Why had Elizabeth done such violence to her affection as to part with her favourite-in-chief; and so far overcome her thrift, as to furnish forth, rather meagrely to be sure, that little army of Englishmen?  Why had the flower of England’s chivalry set foot upon that dark and bloody ground where there seemed so much disaster to encounter, and so little glory to reap?  Why had England thrown herself so heroically into the breach, just as the last bulwarks were falling which protected Holland from the overwhelming onslaught