housand ducats, and he was able
to get that draft discounted on the Antwerp Exchange by consenting to
receive five hundred thousand, or sacrificing sixteen per cent. of the
sum. A good number of transports, and scows had been collected, but there
had been a deficiency of money for their proper equipment, as the five
millions had been very slow in coming, and were still upon the road. The
whole enterprise was on the point of being sacrificed, according to
Farnese, for want of funds. The time for doing the deed had arrived, and
he declared himself incapacitated by poverty. He expressed his disgust
and resentment in language more energetic than courtly; and protested
that he was not to blame. "I always thought," said he bitterly, "that
your Majesty would provide all that was necessary even in superfluity,
and not limit me beneath the ordinary. I did not suppose, when it was
most important to have ready money, that I should be kept short, and not
allowed to draw certain sums by anticipation, which I should have done
had you not forbidden."

This was, through life, a striking characteristic of Philip. Enormous
schemes were laid out with utterly inadequate provision for their
accomplishment, and a confident expectation entertained that wild,
visions were; in some indefinite way, to be converted into substantial
realities, without fatigue or personal exertion on his part, and with a
very trifling outlay of ready money.

Meantime the faithful Farnese did his best. He was indefatigable night
and day in getting his boats together and providing his munitions of war.
He dug a canal from Sas de Gand--which was one of his principal
depots--all the way to Sluys, because the water-communication between
those two points was entirely in the hands of the Hollanders and
Zeelanders. The rebel cruisers swarmed in the Scheldt, from, Flushing
almost to Antwerp, so that it was quite impossible for Parma's forces to
venture forth at all; and it also seemed hopeless to hazard putting to
sea from Sluys. At the same, time he had appointed his, commissioners to
treat with the English envoys already named by the Queen. There had been
much delay in the arrival of those deputies, on account of the noise
raised by Barneveld and his followers; but Burghley was now sanguine that
the exposure of what he called the Advocate's seditious, false, and
perverse proceedings, would enable Leicester to procure the consent of
the States to a universal peace.

And