Certainly the sword was hanging by a thread.  The States had made no peace either with the Archdukes or with Spain.  They had made a truce, half the term of which had already run by.  At any moment the keys of their very house-door might be placed in the hands of their arch enemy.  Treacherous and base as the deed would be, it might be defended by the letter of a treaty in which the Republic had no part; and was there anything too treacherous or too base to be dreaded from James Stuart?

But the States owed the crown of England eight millions of florins, equivalent to about L750,000.  Where was this vast sum to be found?  It was clearly impossible for the States to beg or to borrow it, although they were nearly as rich as any of the leading powers at that day.

It was the merit of Barneveld, not only that he saw the chance for a good bargain, but that he fully comprehended a great danger.  Years long James had pursued the phantom of a Spanish marriage for his son.  To achieve this mighty object, he had perverted the whole policy of the realm; he had grovelled to those who despised him, had repaid attempts at wholesale assassination with boundless sycophancy.  It is difficult to imagine anything more abject than the attitude of James towards Philip.  Prince Henry was dead, but Charles had now become Prince of Wales in his turn, and there was a younger infanta whose hand was not yet disposed of.

So long as the possible prize of a Most Catholic princess was dangling before the eyes of the royal champion of Protestantism, so long there was danger that the Netherlanders might wake up some fine morning and see the flag of Spain waving over the walls of Flushing, Brielle, and Rammekens.

It was in the interest of Spain too that the envoys of James at the Hague were perpetually goading Barneveld to cause the States’ troops to be withdrawn from the duchies and the illusory treaty of Xanten to be executed.  Instead of an eighth province added to the free Netherlands, the result of such a procedure would have been to place that territory enveloping them in the hands of the enemy; to strengthen and sharpen the claws, as the Advocate had called them, by which Spain was seeking to clutch and to destroy the Republic.

The Advocate steadily refused to countenance such policy in the duchies, and he resolved on a sudden stroke to relieve the Commonwealth from the incubus of the English mortgage.

James was desperately pushed for money.  His minions, as insatiable in their demands on English wealth as the parasites who fed on the Queen-Regent were exhaustive of the French exchequer, were greedier than ever now that James, who feared to face a parliament disgusted with the meanness of his policy and depravity of his life, could not be relied upon to minister to their wants.

The Advocate judiciously contrived that the proposal of a compromise should come from the English government.  Noel de Caron, the veteran ambassador of the States in London, after receiving certain proposals, offered, under instructions’ from Barneveld, to pay L250,000 in full of all demands.  It was made to appear that the additional L250,000 was in reality in advance of his instructions.  The mouths of the minions watered at the mention of so magnificent a sum of money in one lump.