and implored
him; at least to pause in these fatal proceedings. After an interval, he
sent two eminent statesmen, Valk and Menin, to lay the subject before the
assembly. They did so, and it was met by fierce denunciation. On their
return, the Earl, finding that so much violence had been excited,
pretended that they had misunderstood his meaning, and that he had never
meant to propose peace-negotiations. But Valk and Menin were too old
politicians to be caught in such a trap, and they produced a brief, drawn
up in Italian--the foreign language best understood by the Earl--with his
own corrections and interlineations, so that he was forced to admit that
there had been no misconception.

Leicester at last could no longer doubt that he was universally odious in
the Provinces. Hohenlo, Barneveld, and the rest, who had "championed the
country against the peace," were carrying all before them. They had
persuaded the people, that the "Queen was but a tickle stay for them,"
and had inflated young Maurice with vast ideas of his importance, telling
him that he was "a natural patriot, the image of his noble father, whose
memory was yet great among them, as good reason, dying in their cause, as
he had done." The country was bent on a popular government, and on
maintaining the war. There was no possibility, he confessed, that they
would ever confer the authority on him which they had formerly bestowed.
The Queen had promised, when he left England the second time, that his
absence should be for but three months, and he now most anxiously claimed
permission to depart. Above all things, he deprecated being employed as a
peace-commissioner. He was, of all men, the most unfit for such a post.
At the same time he implored the statesmen at home to be wary in
selecting the wisest persons for that arduous duty, in order that the
peace might be made for Queen Elizabeth, as well as for King Philip. He
strongly recommended, for that duty, Beale, the councillor, who with
Killigrew had replaced the hated Wilkes and the pacific Bartholomew
Clerk. "Mr. Beale, brother-in-law to Walsingham, is in my books a
prince," said the Earl. "He was drowned in England, but most useful in
the Netherlands. Without him I am naked."

And at last the governor told the Queen what Buckhurst and Walsingham had
been perpetually telling her, that the Duke of Parma meant mischief; and
he sent the same information as to hundreds of boats preparing, with six
thousand shirt