Could the Queen have been informed of this voluntary offer on the part of her envoy to give up the cautionary towns, and to assist in reducing the rebellion, she might have used stronger language of rebuke.  It is quite possible, however, that Farnese—­not so attentively following the Doctor’s eloquence as he had appeared to do-had somewhat inaccurately reported the conversations, which, after all, he knew to be of no consequence whatever, except as time-consumers.  For Elizabeth, desirous of peace as she was, and trusting to Farnese’s sincerity as she was disposed to do, was more sensitive than ever as to her dignity.

“We charge you all,” she wrote with her own hand to the commissioners, “that no word he overslipt by them, that may, touch our honour and greatness, that be not answered with good sharp words.  I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God.”

It would have been better, however, had the Queen more thoroughly understood that the day for scolding had quite gone by, and that something sharper than the sharpest words would soon be wanted to protect England and herself from impending doom.  For there was something almost gigantic in the frivolities with which weeks and months of such precious time were now squandered.  Plenary powers—­“commission bastantissima”—­from his sovereign had been announced by Alexander as in his possession; although the reader has seen that he had no such powers at all.  The mission of Rogers had quieted the envoys at Ostend for a time, and they waited quietly for the visit of Richardot to Ostend, into which the promised meeting of all the Spanish commissioners in that city had dwindled.  Meantime there was an exchange of the most friendly amenities between the English and their mortal enemies.  Hardly a day passed that La Motte, or Renty, or Aremberg, did not send Lord Derby, or Cobham, or Robert Cecil, a hare, or a pheasant, or a cast of hawks, and they in return sent barrel upon barrel of Ostend oysters, five or six hundred at a time.  The Englishmen, too; had it in their power to gratify Alexander himself with English greyhounds, for which he had a special liking.  “You would wonder,” wrote Cecil to his father, “how fond he is of English dogs.”  There was also much good preaching among other occupations, at Ostend.  “My Lord of Derby’s two chaplains,” said Cecil, “have seasoned this town better with sermons than it had been before for a year’s apace.”  But all this did not expedite the negotiations, nor did the Duke manifest so much anxiety for colloquies as for greyhounds.  So, in an unlucky hour for himself, another “fond and vain” old gentleman—­James Croft, the comptroller who had already figured, not much to his credit, in the secret negotiations between the Brussels and English courts—­betook himself, unauthorized and alone; to the Duke at Bruges.  Here he had an interview very similar in character to that in which John Rogers had been indulged, declared to Farnese that the Queen was most anxious for peace,