. There were one
hundred and twenty-one churches, small and large, the most conspicuous of
which was the Cathedral. Old Saint Paul's was not a very magnificent
edifice--but it was an extremely large one, for it was seven hundred and
twenty feet long, one hundred and thirty broad, and had a massive
quadrangular tower, two hundred and sixty feet high. Upon this tower had
stood a timber-steeple, rising, to a height of five hundred and
thirty-four feet from the ground, but it had been struck by lightning in
the year 1561, and consumed to the stone-work.

The Queen's favourite residence was Greenwich Palace, the place of her
birth, and to this mansion, on the 9th of July, the Netherland envoys
were conveyed, in royal barges, from the neighbourhood of Pynchon-lane,
for their first audience.

The deputation was a strong one. There was Falck of Zeeland, a man of
consummate adroitness, perhaps not of as satisfactory integrity; "a
shrewd fellow and a fine," as Lord Leicester soon afterwards
characterised him. There was Menin, pensionary of Dort, an eloquent and
accomplished orator, and employed on this occasion as chief spokesman of
the legation--"a deeper man, and, I think, an honester," said the same
personage, adding, with an eye to business, "and he is but poor, which
you must consider, but with great secrecy." There was Paul Buys, whom we
have met with before; keen, subtle, somewhat loose of life, very
passionate, a most most energetic and valuable friend to England, a
determined foe to France, who had resigned the important post of
Holland's Advocate, when the mission offering sovereignty to Henry III.
had been resolved upon, and who had since that period been most
influential in procuring the present triumph of the English policy.
Through his exertions the Province of Holland had been induced at an
early moment to furnish the most ample instructions to the commissioners
for the satisfaction of Queen Elizabeth in the great matter of the
mortgages. "Judge if this Paul Buys has done his work well," said a
French agent in the Netherlands, who, despite the infamous conduct of his
government towards the Provinces, was doing his best to frustrate the
subsequent negotiation with England, "and whether or no he has Holland
under his thumb." The same individual had conceived hopes from Falck of
Zeeland. That Province, in which lay the great bone of contention between
the Queen and the States--the important town of Flushing--was much