I have travailled with
divers of them underhand, and am promised that some order shall be taken
in that behalf, which I think will be harder to execute as long as Count
Maurice is here. For Ste. Aldegonde's affection, I find continual matter
to suspect it inclined to a peace, and that as one notably prejudging our
scope and proceeding in this cause, doth lie in wait for an occasion to
set it forward, being, as it seems, fed with a hope of 'telle quelle
liberte de conscience,' which the Prince of Parma and others of his
council have, as he confesseth, earnestly solicited at the King's hands.
This appeareth, in truth, the only apt and easy way for them to prevail
both against religion and the liberty of these poor countries, having
thereby once recovered the authority which must necessarily follow a
peace, to renew and alter the magistrates of the particular towns, which,
being at their devotion, may turn, as we say, all upside down, and so in
an instant being under their servitude, if not wholly, at the least in a
great part of the country, leaving so much the less to do about the rest,
a thing confessed and looked for of all men of any judgment here, if the
drift of our peace-makers may take effect."

Sainte Aldegonde had been cured of his suspicions of England, and at last
the purity of his own character shone through the mists.

One winter's morning, two days after Christmas, 1585, Colonel Morgan, an
ingenuous Welshman, whom we have seen doing much hard fighting on
Kowenstyn Dyke, and at other places, and who now commanded the garrison
at Flushing, was taking a walk outside the gates, and inhaling the salt
breezes from the ocean. While thus engaged he met a gentleman coming
along, staff in hand, at a brisk pace towards the town, who soon proved
to be no other than the distinguished and deeply suspected Sainte
Aldegonde. The two got at once into conversation. "He began," said
Morgan, "by cunning insinuations, to wade into matters of state, and at
the last fell to touching the principal points, to wit, her Majesty's
entrance into the cause now in hand, which, quoth he, was an action of
high importance, considering how much it behoved her to go through the
same, as well in regard of the hope that thereby was given to the
distressed people of these parts, as also in consideration of that worthy
personage whom she hath here placed, whose estate and credit may not be
suffered to quail, but must be upholden as becometh the l