since Leicester had been governor-general, had amounted to exactly five hundred and seventy-nine thousand three hundred and sixty pounds and nineteen shillings, of which sum one hundred and forty-six thousand three hundred and eighty-six pounds and eleven shillings had been spent by her Majesty, and the balance had been paid, or was partly owing by the States.  These were not agreeable figures, but the figures of honest accountants rarely flatter, and Wilkes was not one of those financiers who have the wish or the gift to make things pleasant.  He had transmitted the accounts just as they had been delivered, certified by the treasurers of the States and by the English paymasters, and the Queen was appalled at the sum-totals.  She could never proceed with such a war as that, she said, and she declined a loan of sixty thousand pounds which the States requested, besides stoutly refusing to advance her darling Robin a penny to pay off the mortgages upon two-thirds of his estates, on which the equity of redemption was fast expiring, or to give him the slightest help in furnishing him forth anew for the wars.

Yet not one of her statesmen doubted that these Netherland battles were English battles, almost as much as if the fighting-ground had been the Isle of Wight or the coast of Kent, the charts of which the statesmen and generals of Spain were daily conning.

Wilkes, too, while defending Leicester stoutly behind his back, doing his best, to explain his short-comings, lauding his courage and generosity, and advocating his beloved theory of popular sovereignty with much ingenuity and eloquence, had told him the truth to his face.  Although assuring him that if he came back soon, he might rule the States “as a schoolmaster doth his boys,” he did not fail to set before him the disastrous effects of his sudden departure and of his protracted absence; he had painted in darkest colours the results of the Deventer treason, he had unveiled the cabals against his authority, he had repeatedly and vehemently implored his return; he had, informed the Queen, that notwithstanding some errors of, administration, he was much the fittest man to represent her in the Netherlands, and, that he could accomplish, by reason of his experience, more in three months than any other man could do in a year.  He bad done his best to reconcile the feuds which existed between him and important personages in the Netherlands, he had been the author of the complimentary letters sent to him in the name of the States-General—­to the great satisfaction of the Queen—­but he had not given up his friendship with Sir John Norris, because he said “the virtues of the man made him as worthy of love as any one living, and because the more he knew him, the more he had cause to affect and to admire him.”