HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year’s Truce—­1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History of the United Netherlands, Volume 49, 1586

CHAPTER X.

Should Elizabeth accept the Sovereignty?—­The Effects of her Anger—­ Quarrels between the Earl and the Staten—­The Earl’s three Counsellors—­Leicester’s Finance—­Chamber—­Discontent of the Mercantile Classes—­Paul Buys and the Opposition—­Been Insight of Paul Buys—­Truchsess becomes a Spy upon him—­Intrigues of Buys with Denmark—­His Imprisonment—­The Earl’s Unpopularity—­His Quarrels with the States—­And with the Norrises—­His Counsellors Wilkes and Clerke—­Letter from the Queen to Leicester—­A Supper Party at Hohenlo’s—­A drunken Quarrel—­Hohenlo’s Assault upon Edward Norris—­ Ill Effects of the Riot.

The brief period of sunshine had been swiftly followed by storms.  The Governor Absolute had, from the outset, been placed in a false position.  Before he came to the Netherlands the Queen had refused the sovereignty.  Perhaps it was wise in her to decline so magnificent an offer; yet certainly her acceptance would have been perfectly honourable.  The constituted authorities of the Provinces formally made the proposition.  There is no doubt whatever that the whole population ardently desired to become her subjects.  So far as the Netherlands were concerned, then, she would have been fully justified in extending her sceptre over a free people, who, under no compulsion and without any, diplomatic chicane, had selected her for their hereditary chief.  So far as regarded England, the annexation to that country of a continental cluster of states, inhabited by a race closely allied to it by blood, religion, and the instinct for political freedom, seemed, on the whole, desirable.

In a financial point of view, England would certainly lose nothing by the union.  The resources of the Provinces were at leant equal to her own.  We have seen the astonishment which the wealth and strength of the Netherlands excited in their English visitors.  They were amazed by the evidences of commercial and manufacturing prosperity, by the spectacle of luxury and advanced culture, which met them on every side.  Had the Queen—­as it had been generally supposed—­desired to learn whether the Provinces were able and willing to pay the expenses of their own defence before she should definitely decide on, their offer of sovereignty, she was soon thoroughly enlightened upon the subject.  Her confidential agents all—­held one language.  If she would only, accept the sovereignty, the amount which the Provinces would pay was in a manner boundless.  She was assured that the revenue of her own hereditary realm was much inferior to that of the possessions thus offered to her sway.