een
bestowed upon some other personage. It would hardly have comported with
her dignity, if Count Maurice of Nassau, or Count William, or Count
Moeurs, had been appointed governor absolute, for in that case the Earl,
as general of the auxiliary English force, would have been subject to the
authority of the chieftain thus selected. It was impossible, as the
state-council had very plainly shown, for Leicester to exercise supreme
authority, while merely holding the military office of her Majesty's
lieutenant-general. The authority of governor or stadholder could only be
derived from the supreme power of the country. If her Majesty had chosen
to accept the sovereignty, as the States had ever desired, the requisite
authority could then have been derived from her, as from the original
fountain. As she had resolutely refused that offer however, his authority
was necessarily to be drawn from the States-General, or else the Queen
must content herself with seeing him serve as an English military
officer, only subject to the orders of the supreme power, wherever that
power might reside. In short, Elizabeth's wish that her general might be
clothed with the privileges of her viceroy, while she declined herself to
be the sovereign, was illogical, and could not be complied with.

Very soon after inditing these last epistles to the Provinces, the Queen
became more reasonable on the subject; and an elaborate communication was
soon received by the state-council, in which the royal acquiescence was
signified to the latest propositions of the States. The various topics,
suggested in previous despatches from Leicester and from the council,
were reviewed, and the whole subject was suddenly placed in a somewhat
different light from that in which it seemed to have been previously
regarded by her Majesty. She alluded to the excuse, offered by the
state-council, which had been drawn from the necessity of the case, and
from their "great liking for her cousin of Leicester," although in
violation of the original contract. "As you acknowledge, however," she
said, "that therein you were justly to be blamed, and do crave pardon for
the same, we cannot, upon this acknowledgment of your fault, but remove
our former dislike."

Nevertheless it would now seem that her "mistake" had proceeded, not from
the excess, but from the insufficiency of the powers conferred upon the
Earl, and she complained, accordingly, that they had given him shadow
rather than su