It was proposed by the Spanish Government that England should undertake this part of the job, and that King James for such service should receive an annual pension of one million ducats a year.  It was also stipulated that certain cities in the republican dominions should be pledged to him as security for the regular payment of that stipend.  Sir Charles Cornwallis, English ambassador in Spain, lent a most favourable ear to these proposals, and James eagerly sanctioned them so soon as they were secretly imparted to that monarch.  “The king here,” said Cornwallis, “hath need of the King of Great Britain’s arm.  Our king . . . hath good occasion to use the help of the King of Spain’s purse.  The assistance of England to help that nation out of that quicksand of the Low Countries, where so long they have struggled to tread themselves out, and by proof find that deeper in, will be a sovereign medicine to the malady of this estate.  The addition of a million of ducats to the revenue of our sovereign will be a good help to his estate.”

The Spanish Government had even the effrontery to offer the English envoy a reward of two hundred thousand crowns if the negotiations should prove successful.  Care was to be taken however that Great Britain, by this accession of power, both present and in prospect, should not grow too great, Spain reserving to herself certain strongholds and maritime positions in the Netherlands, for the proper security of her European and Indian commerce.

It was thought high time for the bloodshed to cease in the provinces; and as England, by making a treaty of peace with Spain when Spain was at the last gasp, had come to the rescue of that power, it was logical that she should complete the friendly work by compelling the rebellious provinces to awake from their dream of independence.  If the statesmen of Holland believed in the possibility of that independence, the statesmen of England knew better.  If the turbulent little republic was not at last convinced that it had no right to create so much turmoil and inconvenience for its neighbours and for Christendom in general in order to maintain its existence, it should be taught its duty by the sovereigns of Spain and Britain.

It was observed, however, that the more greedily James listened day after day to the marriage propositions, the colder became the Spanish cabinet in regard to that point, the more disposed to postpone those nuptials “to God’s providence and future event.”

The high hopes founded on these secret stratagems were suddenly dashed to the earth before the end of the year; the explosion of the Gunpowder Plot blowing the castles in Spain into the air.

Of course the Spanish politicians vied with each other in expressions of horror and indignation at the Plot, and the wicked contrivers thereof, and suggested to Cornwallis that the King of France was probably at the bottom of it.