rry on the war. The ship was in good condition," he added, "and fit for
a long navigation without danger of shipwreck if there were only biscuit
enough on board." Otherwise she was lost. Before that time came he should
quit the helm which he had been holding the more resolutely since the
peace of Vervins because the king had told him, when concluding it, that
if three years' respite should be given him he would enter into the game
afresh, and take again upon his shoulders the burthen which inevitable
necessity had made him throw down. "But," added Olden-Barneveld,
bitterly, "there is little hope of it now, after his neglect of the many
admirable occasions during the siege of Ostend."

So soon as the Spanish ambassador learned that Caron was to be accepted
into the same diplomatic rank as his own, he made an infinite
disturbance, protested moat loudly and passionately to the king at the
indignity done to his master by this concession to the representative of
a crew of traitors and rebels, and demanded in the name of the treaty
just concluded that Caron should be excluded in such capacity from all
access to court.

As James was nearly forty years of age, as the Hollanders had been rebels
ever since he was born, and as the King of Spain had exercised no
sovereignty over them within his memory, this was naturally asking too
much of him in the name of his new-born alliance with Spain. So he
assumed a position of great dignity, notwithstanding the Constable's
clamour, and declared his purpose to give audience to the agents of the
States by whatever title they presented themselves before him. In so
doing he followed the example, he said, of others who (a strange
admission on his part) were as wise as himself. It was not for him to
censure the crimes and faults of the States, if such they had committed.
He had not been the cause of their revolt from Spanish authority, and it
was quite sufficient that he had stipulated to maintain neutrality
between the two belligerents's. And with this the ambassador of his
Catholic Majesty, having obtained the substance of a very advantageous
treaty, was fain to abandon opposition to the shadowy title by which
James sought to indemnify the republic for his perfidy.

The treaty of peace with Spain gave no pleasure to the English public.
There was immense enthusiasm in London at the almost simultaneous fall of
Sluys, but it was impossible for the court to bring about a popular
demonstration of