was no need of these tricks.  I have been offering to resign my embassy this long time, which will now produce nothing but thorns for me.  How can I negotiate after my private despatches have been read?  L’Hoste, the clerk of Villeroy, was not so great a criminal as the man who revealed my despatches; and L’Hoste was torn by four horses after his death.  Four months long I have been complaining of this to M. de Barneveld. . . .  Patience!  I am groaning without being able to hope for justice.  I console myself, for my term of office will soon arrive.  Would that my embassy could have finished under the agreeable and friendly circumstances with which it began.  The man who may succeed me will not find that this vile trick will help him much . . . .  Pray find out whence and from whom this intrigue has come.”

Certainly an envoy’s position could hardly be more utterly compromised.  Most unquestionably Aerssens had reason to be indignant, believing as he did that his conscientious efforts in the service of his government had been made use of by his chief to undermine his credit and blast his character.  There was an intrigue between the newly appointed French minister, de Russy, at the Hague and the enemies of Aerssens to represent him to his own government as mischievous, passionate, unreasonably vehement in supporting the claims and dignity of his own country at the court to which he was accredited.  Not often in diplomatic history has an ambassador of a free state been censured or removed for believing and maintaining in controversy that his own government is in the right.  It was natural that the French government should be disturbed by the vivid light which he had flashed upon their pernicious intrigues with Spain to the detriment of the Republic, and at the pertinacity with which he resisted their preposterous claim to be reimbursed for one-third of the money which the late king had advanced as a free subsidy towards the war of the Netherlands for independence.  But no injustice could be more outrageous than for the Envoy’s own government to unite with the foreign State in damaging the character of its own agent for the crime of fidelity to itself.

Of such cruel perfidy Aerssens had been the victim, and he most wrongfully suspected his chief as its real perpetrator.

The claim for what was called the “Third” had been invented after the death of Henry.  As already explained, the “Third” was not a gift from England to the Netherlands.  It was a loan from England to France, or more properly a consent to abstain from pressing for payment for this proportion of an old debt.  James, who was always needy, had often desired, but never obtained, the payment of this sum from Henry.  Now that the King was dead, he applied to the Regent’s government, and the Regent’s government called upon the Netherlands, to pay the money.

Aerssens, as the agent of the Republic, protested firmly against such claim.  The money had been advanced by the King as a free gift, as his contribution to a war in which he was deeply interested, although he was nominally at peace with Spain.  As to the private arrangements between France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense bound by them.  He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew nothing of its stipulations.