of the Queen.  It is strange then that he should have shut his eyes to it so wilfully, and stranger still that he should have relied on the envoy’s eloquence instead of his own to mitigate that emotion.  Had he placed his defence simply upon its true basis, the necessity of the case, and the impossibility of carrying out the Queen’s intentions in any other way, it would be difficult to censure him; but that he should seek to screen himself by laying the whole blame on a subordinate, was enough to make any honest man who heard him hang his head.  “I meant not to do it, but Davison told me to do it, please your Majesty, and if there was naughtiness in it, he said he would make it all right with your Majesty.”  Such, reduced to its simplest expression, was the defence of the magnificent Earl of Leicester.

And as he had gone cringing and whining to his royal mistress, so it was natural that he should be brutal and blustering to his friend.

“By your means,” said he, “I have fallen into her Majesty’s deep displeasure . . . .  If you had delivered to her the truth of my dealing, her Highness never could have conceived, as I perceive she doth . . . .  Nor doth her Majesty know how hardly I was drawn to accept this place before I had acquainted her—­as to which you promised you would not only give her full satisfaction, but would, procure me great thanks. . . .  You did chiefly persuade me to take this charge upon me . . . .  You can remember how many treaties you and others had with the States, before I agreed; for all yours and their persuasion to take it. . . .  You gave me assurance to satisfy her Majesty, but I see not that you have done anything . . . .  I did not hide from you the doubt I had of her Majesty’s ill taking it . . . .  You chiefly brought me into it . . . . and it could no way have been heavy to you, though you had told the uttermost of your own doing, as you faithfully promised you would . . . .  I did very unwillingly come into the matter, doubting that to fall out which is come to pass . . . . and it doth so fall out by your negligent carelessness, whereof I many hundred times told you that you would both mar the goodness of the matter, and breed me her Majesty’s displeasure. . . .  Thus fare you well, and except your embassages have better success, I shall have no cause to commend them.”

And so was the unfortunate Davison ground into finest dust between the upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency.

Meantime the other special envoy had made his appearance in the Netherlands; the other go-between between the incensed Queen and the backsliding favourite.  It has already been made sufficiently obvious, by the sketch given of his instructions, that his mission was a delicate one.  In obedience to those instructions, Heneage accordingly made his appearance before the council, and, in Leicester’s presence, delivered to them the severe and biting reprimand which Elizabeth