“They look for no better fruit from the commission to France,” wrote Davison, who surveyed the general state of affairs with much keenness and breadth of vision, “than a dallying entertainment of the time, neither leaving them utterly hopeless, nor at full liberty to seek for relief elsewhere, especially in England, or else some pleasing motion of peace, wherein the French King will offer his mediation with Spain.  Meantime the people, wearied with the troubles, charges, and hazard of the war, shall be rocked asleep, the provision for their defence neglected, some Provinces nearest the danger seduced, the rest by their defection astonished, and the enemy by their decay and confusions, strengthened.  This is the scope whereto the doings of the French King, not without intelligence with the Spanish sovereign, doth aim, whatever is pretended.”

There was a wide conviction that the French King was dealing falsely with the Provinces.  It seemed certain that he must be inspired by intense jealousy of England, and that he was unlikely, for the sake of those whose “religion, popular liberty, and rebellion against their sovereign,” he could not but disapprove, to allow Queen Elizabeth to steal a march upon him, and “make her own market with Spain to his cost and disadvantage.”

In short, it was suspected—­whether justly or not will be presently shown—­that Henry iii. “was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.”  As the letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador in Paris of the tergiversations in Paris, she became the more anxious lest the States should be driven to despair.  She therefore wrote to Davison, instructing him “to nourish in them underhand some hope—­as a thing proceeding from himself—­that though France should reject them, yet she would not abandon them.”

He was directed to find out, by circuitous means, what towns they would offer to her as security for any advances she might be induced to make, and to ascertain the amount of monthly contributions towards the support of the war that they were still capable of furnishing.  She was beginning to look with dismay at the expatriation of wealthy merchants and manufacturers going so rapidly forward, now that Ghent had fallen and Brussels and Antwerp were in such imminent peril.  She feared that, while so much valuable time had been thrown away, the Provinces had become too much impoverished to do their own part in their own defence; and she was seriously alarmed at rumours which had become prevalent of a popular disposition towards treating for a peace at any price with Spain.  It soon became evident that these rumours were utterly without foundation, but the other reasons for Elizabeth’s anxiety were sufficiently valid.

On the whole, the feeling in favour of England was rapidly gaining ground.  In Holland especially there was general indignation against the French party.  The letters of the deputies occasioned “murmur and mislike” of most persons, who noted them to contain “more ample report of ceremonies and compliments than solid argument of comfort.”