that by
offering on their part, and refusal on hers, some further mischief might
be secretly hidden by some odd person's device to the hurt of the cause.
But in that your Lordship did not flatly say to them that yourself did
know her Majesty's mind therein, that she never meant, in this sort, to
take the absolute government, she is offended considering, as she saith,
that none knew her determination therein better than yourself. For at
your going hence, she did peremptorily charge you not to accept any such
title and office; and therefore her straight commandment now is that you
shall not accept the same, for she will never assent thereto, nor avow
you with any such title."

If Elizabeth was so wrathful, even while supposing that the offer had
been gratefully declined, what were likely to be her emotions when she
should be informed that it had been gratefully accepted. The Earl already
began to tremble at the probable consequences of his mal-adroitness.
Grave was the error he had committed in getting himself made
governor-general against orders; graver still, perhaps fatal, the blunder
of not being swift to confess his fault, and cry for pardon, before other
tongues should have time to aggravate his offence. Yet even now he shrank
from addressing the Queen in person, but hoped to conjure the rising
storm by means of the magic wand of the Lord-Treasurer. He implored his
friend's interposition to shield him in the emergency, and begged that at
least her Majesty and the lords of council would suspend their judgment
until Mr. Davison should deliver those messages and explanations with
which, fully freighted, he was about to set sail from the Brill.

"If my reasons seem to your wisdoms," said he, "other than such as might
well move a true and a faithful careful man to her Majesty to do as I
have done, I do desire, for my mistaking offence, to bear the burden of
it; to be disavowed with all displeasure and disgrace; a matter of as
great reproach and grief as ever can happen to any man." He begged that
another person might be sent as soon as possible in his place-protesting,
however, by his faith in Christ, that he had done only what he was bound
to do by his regard for her Majesty's service--and that when he set foot
in the country he had no more expected to be made Governor of the
Netherlands than to be made King of Spain. Certainly he had been paying
dear for the honour, if honour it was, and he had not intended on setting