On his journey he fell in with an Italian merchant,—­Lanfranchi by name, of a great commercial house in Antwerp, in the days when Antwerp had commerce, and by him, on his arrival the same evening in that town, he was made an honoured guest, both for his father’s sake and his Queen’s.  “’Tis the pleasantest city that ever I saw,” said Cecil, “for situation and building; but utterly left and abandoned now by those rich merchants that were wont to frequent the place.”

His host was much interested in the peace-negotiations, and indeed, through his relations with Champagny and Andreas de Loo, had been one of the instruments by which it had been commenced.  He inveighed bitterly against the Spanish captains and soldiers, to whose rapacity and ferocity he mainly ascribed the continuance of the war;—­and he was especially incensed with Stanley and other—­English renegades, who were thought fiercer haters of England than were the Spaniards themselves:  Even in the desolate and abject condition of Antwerp and its neighbourhood, at that moment, the quick eye of Cecil detected the latent signs of a possible splendour.  Should peace be restored, the territory once more be tilled, and the foreign merchants attracted thither again, he believed that the governor of the obedient Netherlands might live there in more magnificence than the King of Spain himself, exhausted as were his revenues by the enormous expense of this protracted war:  Eight hundred thousand dollars monthly; so Lanfranchi informed Cecil, were the costs of the forces on the footing then established.  This, however, was probably an exaggeration, for the royal account books showed a less formidable sum, although a sufficiently large one to appal a less obstinate bigot than Philip.  But what to him were the, ruin of the Netherlands; the impoverishment of Spain, and the downfall of her ancient grandeur compared to the glory of establishing the Inquisition in England and Holland?

While at dinner in Lanfranchi’s house; Cecil was witness to another characteristic of the times, and one which afforded proof of even more formidable freebooters abroad than those for whom the bailiff of Waasland had erected his gibbets.  A canal-boat had left Antwerp for Brussels that morning, and in the vicinity of the latter city had been set upon by a detachment from the English garrison of Bergen-op-Zoom, and captured, with twelve prisoners and a freight of 60,000 florins in money.  “This struck the company at the dinner-table all in a dump;” said Cecil.  And well it might; for the property mainly belonged to themselves, and they forthwith did their best to have the marauders waylaid on their return.  But Cecil, notwithstanding his gratitude for the hospitality of Lanfranchi, sent word next day to the garrison of Bergen of the designs against them, and on his arrival at the place had the satisfaction of being informed by Lord Willoughby that the party had got safe home with their plunder.