Thanks to the babbling of the very men, whose chief instructions had been to hold their tongues, and to listen with all their ears, the secret negotiations between Parma and the English counsellors became the town-talk at Antwerp, the Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, London.  It is true that it was impossible to know what was actually said and done; but that there was something doing concerning which Leicester was not to be informed was certain.  Grafigni, during one of his visits to the obedient provinces, brought a brace of greyhounds and a couple of horses from England, as a present to Alexander, and he perpetually went about, bragging to every one of important negotiations which he was conducting, and of his intimacy with great personages in both countries.  Leicester, on the other hand, was kept in the dark.  To him Grafigni made no communications, but he once sent him a dish of plums, “which,” said the Earl, with superfluous energy, “I will boldly say to you, by the living God, is all that I have ever had since I came into these countries.”  When it is remembered that Leicester had spent many thousand pounds in the Netherland cause, that he had deeply mortgaged his property in order to provide more funds, that he had never received a penny of salary from the Queen, that his soldiers were “ragged and torn like rogues-pity to see them,” and were left without the means of supporting life; that he had been neglected, deceived, humiliated, until he was forced to describe himself as a “forlorn man set upon a forlorn hope,” it must be conceded that Grafigni’s present of a dish of plums could hardly be sufficient to make him very happy.

From time to time he was enlightened by Sir Francis, who occasionally forced his adversaries’ hands, and who always faithfully informed the Earl of everything he could discover.  “We are so greedy of a peace, in respect of the charges of the wars,” he wrote in April, “as in the procuring thereof we weigh neither honour nor safety.  Somewhat here is adealing underhand, wherein there is great care taken that I should not be made acquainted withal.”  But with all their great care, the conspirators, as it has been seen, were sometimes outwitted by the Secretary, and, when put to the blush, were forced to take him into half-confidence.  “Your Lordship may see,” he wrote, after getting possession of Parma’s letter to the Queen, and unravelling Croft’s intrigues, “what effects are wrought by such weak ministers.  They that have been the employers of them are ashamed of the matter.”

Unutterable was the amazement, as we have seen, of Bodman and Grafigni when they had suddenly found themselves confronted in Burghley’s private apartments in Greenwich Palace, whither they had been conducted so mysteriously after dark from the secret pavilion—­by the grave Secretary of State, whom they had been so anxious to deceive; and great was the embarrassment of Croft and Cobham, and even of the imperturbable Burghley.