The Lord Treasurer ventured to remonstrate, but was bid to bold his tongue.  Ever variable and mutable as woman, Elizabeth was perplexing and baffling to her counsellors, at this epoch, beyond all divination.  The “sparing humour” was increasing fearfully, and she thought it would be easier for her to slip out of the whole expensive enterprise, provided Leicester were merely her lieutenant-general, and not stadholder for the Provinces.  Moreover the secret negotiations for peace were producing a deleterious effect upon her mind.  Upon this subject, the Queen and Burghley, notwithstanding his resemblance to Mary Magdalen, were better informed than the Secretary, whom, however, it had been impossible wholly to deceive.  The man who could read secrets so far removed as the Vatican, was not to be blinded to intrigues going on before his face.  The Queen, without revealing more than she could help, had been obliged to admit that informal transactions were pending, but had authorised the Secretary to assure the United States that no treaty would be made without their knowledge and full concurrence.  “She doth think,” wrote Walsingham to Leicester, “that you should, if you shall see no cause to the contrary, acquaint the council of state there that certain overtures of peace are daily made unto her, but that she meaneth not to proceed therein without their good liking and privity, being persuaded that there can no peace be made profitable or sure for her that shall not also stand with their safety; and she doth acknowledge hers to be so linked with theirs as nothing can fall out to their prejudice, but she must be partaker of their harm.”

This communication was dated on the 21st April, exactly three weeks after the Queen’s letter to Heneage, in which she had spoken of the “malicious bruits” concerning the pretended peace-negotiations; and the Secretary was now confirming, by her order, what she had then stated under her own hand, that she would “do nothing that might concern them without their own knowledge and good liking.”

And surely nothing could be more reasonable.  Even if the strict letter of the August treaty between the Queen and the States did not provide against any separate negotiations by the one party without the knowledge of the other, there could be no doubt at all that its spirit absolutely forbade the clandestine conclusion of a peace with Spain by England alone, or by the Netherlands alone, and that such an arrangement would be disingenuous, if not positively dishonourable.

Nevertheless it would almost seem that Elizabeth had been taking advantage of the day when she was writing her letter to Heneage on the 1st of April.  Never was painstaking envoy more elaborately trifled with.  On the 26th of the month—­and only five days after the communication by Walsingham just noticed—­the Queen was furious that any admission should have been made to the States of their right to participate with her in peace-negotiations.