the ruin of the republic.  Wilkes was also very anxious lest the Earl of Leicester should hear of the matter.  He was already the object of hatred to that powerful personage, and thought him capable of accomplishing his destruction in any mode.  But if Leicester could wreak his vengeance upon his enemy Wilkes by the hand of his other deadly enemy Hohenlo, the councillor felt that this kind of revenge would have a double sweetness for him.  The Queen knows what I have been saying, thought Wilkes, and therefore Leicester knows it; and if Leicester knows it, he will take care that Hohenlo shall hear of it too, and then wo be unto me.  “Your honour knoweth,” he said to Walsingham, “that her Majesty can hold no secrets, and if she do impart it to Leicester, then am I sped.”

Nothing came of it however, and the relations of Wilkes and Buckhurst with Hohenlo continued to be friendly.  It was a lesson to Wilkes to be more cautious even with the cautious Walsingham.  “We had but bare suspicions,” said Buckhurst, “nothing fit, God knoweth, to come to such a reckoning.  Wilkes saith he meant it but for a premonition to you there; but I think it will henceforth be a premonition to himself—­there being but bare presumptions, and yet shrewd presumptions.”

Here then were Deventer and Leicester plotting to overthrow the government of the States; the States and Hohenlo arming against Leicester; the extreme democratic party threatening to go over to the Spaniards within three months; the Earl accused of attempting the life of Hohenlo; Hohenlo offering to shed the last drop of his blood for Queen Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth giving orders to throw Hohenlo into prison as a traitor; Councillor Wilkes trembling for his life at the hands both of Leicester and Hohenlo; and Buckhurst doing his best to conciliate all parties, and imploring her Majesty in vain to send over money to help on the war, and to save her soldiers from starving.

For the Queen continued to refuse the loan of fifty thousand pounds which the provinces solicited, and in hope of which the States had just agreed to an extra contribution of a million florins (L100,000), a larger sum than had been levied by a single vote since the commencement of the war.  It must be remembered, too, that the whole expense of the war fell upon Holland and Zeeland.  The Province of Utrecht, where there was so strong a disposition to confer absolute authority upon Leicester, and to destroy the power of the States-General contributed absolutely nothing.  Since the Loss of Deventer, nothing could be raised in the Provinces of Utrecht, Gelderland or Overyssel; the Spaniards levying black mail upon the whole territory, and impoverishing the inhabitants till they became almost a nullity.  Was it strange then that the States of Holland and Zeeland, thus bearing nearly the whole; burden of the war, should be dissatisfied with the hatred felt toward them by their sister Provinces so generously protected by them?  Was it unnatural that Barneveld, and Maurice, and Hohenlo, should be disposed to bridle the despotic inclinations of Leicester, thus fostered by those who existed, as it were, at their expense?