he step, for the States did not
consider themselves strong enough to maintain the independent republic
which had already risen.

It might be a question whether, on the whole, Elizabeth made a mistake in
declining the sovereignty. She was certainly wrong, however, in wishing
the lieutenant-general of her six thousand auxiliary troops to be
clothed, as such, with vice-regal powers. The States-General, in a moment
of enthusiasm, appointed him governor absolute, and placed in his hands,
not only the command of the forces, but the entire control of their
revenues, imposts, and customs, together with the appointment of civil
and military officers. Such an amount of power could only be delegated by
the sovereign. Elizabeth had refused the sovereignty: it then rested with
the States. They only, therefore, were competent to confer the power
which Elizabeth wished her favourite to exercise simply as her
lieutenant-general.

Her wrathful and vituperative language damaged her cause and that of the
Netherlands more severely than can now be accurately estimated. The Earl
was placed at once in a false, a humiliating, almost a ridiculous
position. The authority which the States had thus a second time offered
to England was a second time and most scornfully thrust back upon them.
Elizabeth was indignant that "her own man" should clothe himself in the
supreme attributes which she had refused. The States were forced by the
violence of the Queen to take the authority into their own hands again,
and Leicester was looked upon as a disgraced man.

Then came the neglect with which the Earl was treated by her Majesty and
her ill-timed parsimony towards the cause. No letters to him in four
months, no remittances for the English troops, not a penny of salary for
him. The whole expense of the war was thrown for the time upon their
hands, and the English soldiers seemed only a few thousand starving,
naked, dying vagrants, an incumbrance instead of an aid.

The States, in their turn, drew the purse-strings. The two hundred
thousand florins monthly were paid. The four hundred thousand florins
which had been voted as an additional supply were for a time held back,
as Leicester expressly stated, because of the discredit which had been
thrown upon him from home.

[Strangely enough, Elizabeth was under the impression that the extra
grant of 400,000 florins (L40,000) for four months was four hundred
thousand pounds sterling. "The rest that w