It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course, notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and Henry.  Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and incalculable danger themselves.

But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to contend against in vain.  Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best.  Obliged by his position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion but contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough.  It was absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his country and save it from impending danger.  So long as he was faithfully served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to whom he gave his heart, he could confront external enemies and mould the policy of wavering allies.

Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in regard to Spain.  For seven long years he was as one entranced, the slave to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son.  It was in vain that his counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored.  Parliament was told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that interference on their part was an impertinence.  Parliament’s duty was a simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required it, without asking for reasons.  It was already a great concession that he should ask for it in person.  They had nothing to do with his affairs nor with general politics.  The mystery of government was a science beyond their reach, and with which they were not to meddle.  “Ne sutor ultra crepidam,” said the pedant.

Upon that one point his policy was made to turn.  Spain held him in the hollow of her hand.  The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or irritate a froward child.  Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him spellbound.  Did he falter in his opposition to the States—­did he cease to goad them for their policy in the duchies—­did he express sympathy with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England had ever trod and was bound to tread—­the road of determined resistance to Spanish ambition—­instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was on his knees again.  A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the King as the worst enemy of Spain.  The usual threat was made, the wand was waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in pursuance of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.