very means
of entering into communication with Spain, and that they were doing so
with the participation of the Queen! Lord-Treasurer Burghley and
Comptroller Croft had expressed surprise that the Prince had not yet sent
a secret agent to her Majesty, under pretext of demanding explanations
concerning Lord Leicester's presence in the Provinces, but in reality to
treat for peace. Such an agent, it had been intimated, would be well
received. The Lord-Treasurer and the Comptroller would do all in their
power to advance the negotiation, so that, with their aid and with the
pacific inclination of the Queen, the measures proposed in favour of
Leicester would be suspended, and perhaps the Earl himself and all the
English would be recalled.

The Queen was further represented as taking great pains to excuse both
the expedition of Sir Francis Drake to the Indies, and the mission of
Leicester to the Provinces. She was said to throw the whole blame of
these enterprises upon Walsingham and other ill-intentioned personages,
and to avow that she now understood matters better; so that, if Parma
would at once send an envoy, peace would, without question, soon be made.

Parma had expressed his gratification at these hopeful dispositions on
the part of Burghley and Croft, and held out hopes of sending an agent to
treat with them, if not directly with her Majesty. For some time
past--according to the Prince--the English government had not seemed to
be honestly seconding the Earl of Leicester, nor to correspond with his
desires. "This makes me think," he said, "that the counsellors
before-mentioned, being his rivals, are trying to trip him up."

In such a caballing, prevaricating age, it is difficult to know which of
all the plotters and counterplotters engaged in these intrigues could
accomplish the greatest amount of what--for the sake of diluting in nine
syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in one--was then
called diplomatic dissimulation. It is to be feared, notwithstanding her
frequent and vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial
votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished. We know how loudly
Leicester had complained--we have seen how clearly Walsingham could
convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an
absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe
and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of an
argument with private individual