Thus it was obvious that he had no secret despair of his cause when it should be thoroughly laid before the Queen.  The wonder was that he had added the offence of long silence to the sin of disobedience.  Davison had sailed, however, before the receipt of the Earl’s letter.  He had been furnished with careful instructions upon the subject of his mission.  He was to show how eager the States had been to have Leicester for their absolute governor—­which was perfectly true—­and how anxious the Earl had been to decline the proffered honour—­which was certainly false, if contemporary record and the minutes of the States-General are to be believed.  He was to sketch the general confusion which had descended upon the country, the quarrelling of politicians, and the discontent of officers and soldiers, from out of all which chaos one of two results was sure to arise:  the erection of a single chieftain, or a reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain.  That it would be impossible for the Earl to exercise the double functions with which he was charged—­of general of her Majesty’s forces, and general and chief counsellor of the States—­if any other man than himself should be appointed governor; was obvious.  It was equally plain that the Provinces could only be kept at her Majesty’s disposition by choosing the course which, at their own suggestion, had been adopted.  The offer of the government by the States, and its acceptance by the Earl, were the logical consequence of the step which the Queen had already taken.  It was thus only that England could retain her hold upon the country, and even upon the cautionary towns.  As to a reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain—­which would have been the probable result of Leicester’s rejection of the proposition made by the Stateait was unnecessary to do more than allude to such a catastrophe.  No one but a madman could doubt that, in such an event, the subjugation of England was almost certain.

But before the arrival of the ambassador, the Queen had been thoroughly informed as to the whole extent of the Earl’s delinquency.  Dire was the result.  The wintry gales which had been lashing the North Sea, and preventing the unfortunate Davison from setting forth on his disastrous mission, were nothing to the tempest of royal wrath which had been shaking the court-world to its centre.  The Queen had been swearing most fearfully ever since she read the news, which Leicester had not dared to communicate directly, to herself.  No one was allowed to speak a word in extenuation of the favourite’s offence.  Burghley, who lifted up his voice somewhat feebly to appease her wrath, was bid, with a curse, to hold his peace.  So he took to his bed-partly from prudence, partly from gout—­and thus sheltered himself for a season from the peltings of the storm.  Walsingham, more manful, stood to his post, but could not gain a hearing.  It was the culprit that should have spoken, and spoken in time.  “Why, why did you not write yourself?” was the plaintive cry of all the Earl’s friends, from highest to humblest.  “But write to her now,” they exclaimed, “at any rate; and, above all, send her a present, a love-gift.”  “Lay out two or three hundred crowns in some rare thing, for a token to her Majesty,” said Christopher Hatton.