The seat of war, at the opening of the apparently inevitable conflict between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union, would be those debateable duchies, those border provinces, the possession of which was of such vital importance to each of the great contending parties, and the populations of which, although much divided, were on the whole more inclined to the League than to the Union.  It was natural enough that the Dutch statesman should chafe at the possibility of their being lost to the Union through the adroitness of the Catholic managers and the supineness of the great allies of the Republic.

Three weeks later than these last utterances of the Advocate, he was given to understand that King James was preparing to slide away from the position which had been three times changed to make it suitable for him.  His indignation was hot.

“Sir Henry Wotton,” he said, “has communicated to me his last despatches from Newmarket.  I am in the highest degree amazed that after all our efforts at accommodation, with so much sacrifice to the electors, the provinces, and ourselves, they are trying to urge us there to consent that the promise be not made to the Kings of France and Great Britain as mediators, although the proposition came from the Spanish side.  After we had renounced, by desire of his Majesty, the right to refer the promise to the Treaty of Xanten, it was judged by both kings to be needful and substantial that the promise be made to their Majesties.  To change this now would be prejudicial to the kings, to the electors, the duchies, and to our commonwealth; to do us a wrong and to leave us naked.  France maintains her position as becoming and necessary.  That Great Britain should swerve from it is not to be digested here.  You will do your utmost according to my previous instructions to prevent any pressure to this end.  You will also see that the name of the Emperor is mentioned neither in the preamble nor the articles of the treaty.  It would be contrary to all our policy since 1610.  You may be firmly convinced that malice is lurking under the Emperor’s name, and that he and the King of Spain and their adherents, now as before, are attempting a sequestration.  This is simply a pretext to bring those principalities and provinces into the hands of the Spaniards, for which they have been labouring these thirty years.  We are constantly cheated by these Spanish tricks.  Their intention is to hold Wesel and all the other places until the conclusion of the Italian affair, and then to strike a great blow.”

Certainly were never words more full of sound statesmanship, and of prophecy too soon to be fulfilled, than these simple but pregnant warnings.  They awakened but little response from the English government save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave it longer in the hands of Spain.  As if the Advocate had not proved to demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to give up the game altogether.