not conclusive proof, but it has already been shown, from a deciphered letter, that the Queen had once given Buckhurst and Wilkes peremptory orders to seize the person of Hohenlo, and it is quite possible that similar orders may have been received at a later moment with regard to the young Count and the Advocate.  At any rate, it is certain that late in the autumn, some friends of Barneveld entered his bedroom, at the Hague, in the dead of night, and informed him that a plot was on foot to lay violent hands upon him, and that an armed force was already on its way to execute this purpose of Leicester, before the dawn of day.  The Advocate, without loss of time, took his departure for Delft, a step which was followed, shortly afterwards, by Maurice.

Nor was this the only daring—­stroke which the Earl had meditated.  During the progress of the secret negotiations with Parma, he had not neglected those still more secret schemes to which he had occasionally made allusion.  He had determined, if possible, to obtain possession of the most important cities in Holland and Zeeland.  It was very plain to him, that he could no longer hope, by fair means, for the great authority once conferred upon him by the free will of the States.  It was his purpose, therefore, by force and stratagem to recover his lost power.  We have heard the violent terms in which both the Queen and the Earl denounced the men who accused the English government of any such intention.  It had been formally denied by the States-General that Barneveld had ever used the language in that assembly with which he had been charged.  He had only revealed to them the exact purport of the letter to Junius, and of the Queen’s secret instructions to Leicester.  Whatever he may have said in private conversation, and whatever deductions he may have made among his intimate friends, from the admitted facts in the case, could hardly be made matters of record.  It does not appear that he, or the statesmen who acted with him, considered the Earl capable of a deliberate design to sell the cities, thus to be acquired, to Spain, as the price of peace for England.  Certainly Elizabeth would have scorned such a crime, and was justly indignant at rumours prevalent to that effect; but the wrath of the Queen and of her favourite were, perhaps, somewhat simulated, in order to cover their real mortification at the discovery of designs on the part of the Earl which could not be denied.  Not only had they been at last compelled to confess these negotiations, which for several months had been concealed and stubbornly denied, but the still graver plots of the Earl to regain his much-coveted authority had been, in a startling manner, revealed.  The leaders of the States-General had a right to suspect the English Earl of a design to reenact the part of the Duke of Anjou, and were justified in taking stringent measures to prevent a calamity, which, as they believed, was impending over their little commonwealth.