Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope
     Arminianism
     As logical as men in their cups are prone to be
     Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year’s Truce—­1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 50, 1586

CHAPTER.  XI

   Drake in the Netherlands—­Good Results of his Visit—­The Babington
   Conspiracy—­Leicester decides to visit England—­Exchange of parting
   Compliments.

Late in the autumn of the same year an Englishman arrived in the Netherlands, bearer of despatches from the Queen.  He had been entrusted by her Majesty with a special mission to the States-General, and he had soon an interview with that assembly at the Hague.

He was a small man, apparently forty-five years of age, of a fair but somewhat weather-stained complexion, with light-brown, closely-curling hair, an expansive forehead, a clear blue eye, rather commonplace features, a thin, brown, pointed beard, and a slight moustache.  Though low of stature, he was broad-chested, with well-knit limbs.  His hands, which were small and nervous, were brown and callous with the marks of toil.  There was something in his brow and glance not to be mistaken, and which men willingly call master; yet he did not seem, to have sprung of the born magnates of the earth.  He wore a heavy gold chain about his neck, and it might be observed that upon the light full sleeves of his slashed doublet the image of a small ship on a terrestrial globe was curiously and many times embroidered.

It was not the first time that he had visited the Netherlands.  Thirty years before the man had been apprentice on board a small lugger, which traded between the English coast and the ports of Zeeland.  Emerging in early boyhood from his parental mansion—­an old boat, turned bottom upwards on a sandy down he had naturally taken to the sea, and his master, dying childless not long afterwards, bequeathed to him the lugger.  But in time his spirit, too much confined by coasting in the narrow seas, had taken a bolder flight.  He had risked his hard-earned savings in a voyage with the old slave-trader, John Hawkins—­whose exertions, in what was then considered an honourable and useful vocation, had been rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with her special favour, and with a coat of arms, the crest whereof was a negro’s head, proper, chained—­but the lad’s first and last enterprise in this field was unfortunate.  Captured by Spaniards, and only escaping with life, he determined to revenge himself on the whole Spanish nation; and this was considered a most legitimate proceeding according to the “sea divinity” in which he, had been schooled.  His subsequent expeditions against