s, 'while the enemy has
only one hand free, than later when he can strike with both.'[249]

In August 1585 Antwerp fell into the hands of the Spaniards; in the
capitulation the case is already taken into consideration, that
Holland and Zealand also might submit. The Northern Netherlands were
threatened from yet another side, as Zutphen and Nimuegen had just
been taken by the Spaniards. In this extreme distress of her natural
ally she delayed no longer. The sovereignty they offered her she
refused anew, but she engaged to give considerable assistance, in
return for which, as a security for her advances, the fortresses
Vliessingen and Briel were given up into her possession. To prove how
much she was in earnest in this, she entrusted the conduct of the war
in the Netherlands to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who was still
accounted her favourite and was one of the chief confidants of her
policy. In December 1585 Leicester reached Vliessingen; on the 1st of
January 1586, Francis Drake appeared before St. Domingo and occupied
it. The war had broken out by land and by sea.

NOTES:

[232] Randolph states that the promise was given before Darnley's
death. Strype, Annals iii. i. 234.

[233] That this was thought of from the first is not to be supposed;
the Queen had once previously declared herself against it. 'We fynde
her removing either into this our realm or into France not without
great discommodities to us.' Letter to Throckmorton, in Wright i. 253.

[234] Gonzalez, Apuntamientos 338. From the 'short memoryall' of 1569
in Hayne's State Papers 585 (though much in it is incorrect), we see
that men believed in the union of both crowns against England, with
'the ernest desyre to have the Quene of Scotts possess this crown of
England.'

[235] 'Sentenza declaratoria contra Elizabetta, che si pretende reina
d'Inghilterra.' In Catena, Vita di Pio V, 309. The agreement of the
bull (e.g. as to the 'huomini heretici et ignobili,' who had
penetrated into the royal privy council) with the manifesto of the
last rebellion, is worth observing.

[236] The instructions which Mary and Norfolk gave their Italian agent
for the Roman See are preserved in the Vatican archives and printed in
Labanoff iii. 221. From Leslie's expression (Negociations, in Anderson
iii. 152) that the duke negociated with Ridolfi through a Mr. Backer,
'because he had the Italian tongue,' and that then all the plans were
communicated to _him_ ('the whole devises'