ealings of York and Stanley with Tassis and Parma, had long been causing
painful anxiety, and had formed the subject of repeated remonstrances on
the part of the 'States' to Leicester and to the Queen. The deputies were
hardly, prepared therefore to defend their own people against dealing
privately with the King of Spain. The only man suspected of such
practices was Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault,
whom the Earl had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances
of the States, who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now
in prison, and threatened with capital punishment.

To suppose that Buys or Barneveld, Roorda, Meetkerk, or any other leading
statesman in the Netherlands, was contemplating a private arrangement
with Philip II., was as ludicrous a conception as to imagine Walsingham a
pensioner of the Pope, or Cecil in league with the Duke of Guise. The end
and aim of the States' party was war. In war they not only saw the safety
of the reformed religion, but the only means of maintaining the
commercial prosperity of the commonwealth. The whole correspondence of
the times shows that no politician in the country dreamed of peace,
either by public or secret negotiation. On the other hand--as will be
made still clearer than ever--the Queen was longing for peace, and was
treating for peace at that moment through private agents, quite without
the knowledge of the States, and in spite of her indignant disavowals in
her speech to the envoys.

Yet if Elizabeth could have had the privilege of entering--as we are
about to do--into the private cabinet of that excellent King of Spain,
with whom, she had once been such good friends, who had even sought her
hand in marriage, and with whom she saw no reason whatever why she should
not live at peace, she might have modified her expressions an this
subject. Certainly, if she could have looked through the piles of
papers--as we intend to do--which lay upon that library-table, far beyond
the seas and mountains, she would have perceived some objections to the
scheme of living at peace with that diligent letter-writer.

Perhaps, had she known how the subtle Farnese was about to express
himself concerning the fast-approaching execution of Mary, and the as
inevitably impending destruction of "that Englishwoman" through the
schemes of his master and himself, she would have paid less heed to the
sentiments couched in most exquisite Italian which