He had sent a state-counsellor, one Bardesius, to the Hague, to open the matter; but that personage had only ventured to whisper a word to one or two members of the States, and was assured that the proposition, if made, would raise such a tumult of fury, that he might fear for his life.  So poor Bardesius came back to Leicester, fell on his knees, and implored him; at least to pause in these fatal proceedings.  After an interval, he sent two eminent statesmen, Valk and Menin, to lay the subject before the assembly.  They did so, and it was met by fierce denunciation.  On their return, the Earl, finding that so much violence had been excited, pretended that they had misunderstood his meaning, and that he had never meant to propose peace-negotiations.  But Valk and Menin were too old politicians to be caught in such a trap, and they produced a brief, drawn up in Italian—­the foreign language best understood by the Earl—­with his own corrections and interlineations, so that he was forced to admit that there had been no misconception.

Leicester at last could no longer doubt that he was universally odious in the Provinces.  Hohenlo, Barneveld, and the rest, who had “championed the country against the peace,” were carrying all before them.  They had persuaded the people, that the “Queen was but a tickle stay for them,” and had inflated young Maurice with vast ideas of his importance, telling him that he was “a natural patriot, the image of his noble father, whose memory was yet great among them, as good reason, dying in their cause, as he had done.”  The country was bent on a popular government, and on maintaining the war.  There was no possibility, he confessed, that they would ever confer the authority on him which they had formerly bestowed.  The Queen had promised, when he left England the second time, that his absence should be for but three months, and he now most anxiously claimed permission to depart.  Above all things, he deprecated being employed as a peace-commissioner.  He was, of all men, the most unfit for such a post.  At the same time he implored the statesmen at home to be wary in selecting the wisest persons for that arduous duty, in order that the peace might be made for Queen Elizabeth, as well as for King Philip.  He strongly recommended, for that duty, Beale, the councillor, who with Killigrew had replaced the hated Wilkes and the pacific Bartholomew Clerk.  “Mr. Beale, brother-in-law to Walsingham, is in my books a prince,” said the Earl.  “He was drowned in England, but most useful in the Netherlands.  Without him I am naked.”

And at last the governor told the Queen what Buckhurst and Walsingham had been perpetually telling her, that the Duke of Parma meant mischief; and he sent the same information as to hundreds of boats preparing, with six thousand shirts for camisados, 7000 pairs of wading boots, and saddles, stirrups, and spurs, enough for a choice band of 3000 men.  A shrewd troop, said the Earl, of the first soldiers in Christendom, to be landed some fine morning in England.  And he too had heard of the jewelled suits of cramoisy velvet, and all the rest of the finery with which the triumphant Alexander was intending to astonish London.  “Get horses enough, and muskets enough in England,” exclaimed Leicester, “and then our people will not be beaten, I warrant you, if well led.”