the monstrous error of entrusting his defence to envoy Davison, whom he determined to despatch at once with instructions to the Queen, and towards whom he committed the grave offence of concealing from him her previous prohibitions.  But how could the Earl fail to perceive that it was the woman, not the Queen, whom he should have implored for pardon; that it was Robert Dudley, not William Davison, who ought to have sued upon his knees.  This whole matter of the Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester stadholderate, forms a strange psychological study, which deserves and requires some minuteness of attention; for it was by the characteristics of these eminent personages that the current history was deeply stamped.

Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should have been a letter from Leicester.  On the contrary, it proved to be a dull formal epistle from the States.

And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered necessary.  On the 3rd February the ambassador—­having announced his intention of going to England, by command of his Excellency, so soon as the Earl should have been inaugurated, for the purpose of explaining all these important transactions to her Majesty—­waited upon the States with the request that they should prepare as speedily as might be their letter to the Queen, with other necessary documents, to be entrusted to his care.  He also suggested that the draft or minute of their proposed epistle should be submitted to him for advice—­“because the humours of her Majesty were best known to him.”

Now the humours of her Majesty were best known to Leicester of all men in the whole world, and it is inconceivable that he should have allowed so many days and weeks to pass without taking these humours properly into account.  But the Earl’s head was slightly turned by his sudden and unexpected success.  The game that he had been pursuing had fallen into his grasp, almost at the very start, and it is not astonishing that he should have been somewhat absorbed in the enjoyment of his victory.

Three days later (6th February) the minute of a letter to Elizabeth, drawn up by Menin, was submitted to the ambassador; eight days after that (14th February) Mr. Davison took leave of the States, and set forth for the Brill on his way to England; and three or four days later yet, he was still in that sea-port, waiting for a favourable wind.  Thus from the 11th January, N.S., upon which day the first offer of the absolute government had been made to Leicester, nearly forty days had elapsed, during which long period the disobedient Earl had not sent one line, private or official, to her Majesty on this most important subject.  And when at last the Queen was to receive information of her favourite’s delinquency, it was not to be in his well-known handwriting and accompanied by his penitent tears and written caresses, but to be laid before her with all the formality of parchment and sealingwax, in the stilted diplomatic jargon of those “highly-mighty, very learned, wise, and very foreseeing gentlemen, my lords the States-General.”  Nothing could have been managed with less adroitness.