he protested herself not void of compassion for their estate, and for
the pitiful condition of the great multitude of kind and godly people,
subject to the miseries which, by the States government, were like to
fall upon them, unless God should specially interpose; and she had
therefore determined, for the time, to continue her subsidies, according
to the covenant between them. If, meantime, she should conclude a peace
with Spain, she promised to them the same care for their country as for
her own.

Accordingly the Earl, after despatching an equally ill-tempered letter to
the States, in which he alluded, at unmerciful length, to all the old
grievances, blamed them for the loss of Sluys, for which place he
protested that they had manifested no more interest than if it had been
San Domingo in Hispaniola, took his departure for Flushing. After
remaining there, in a very moody frame of mind, for several days,
expecting that the States would, at least, send a committee to wait upon
him and receive his farewells, he took leave of them by letter. "God send
me shortly a wind to blow me from them all," he exclaimed--a prayer which
was soon granted--and before the end of the year he was safely landed in
England. "These legs of mine," said he, clapping his hands upon them as
he sat in his chamber at Margate, "shall never go again into Holland. Let
the States get others to serve their mercenary turn, for me they shall
not have." Upon giving up the government, he caused a medal to be struck
in his own honour. The device was a flock of sheep watched by an English
mastiff. Two mottoes--"non gregem aed ingratos," and "invitus
desero"--expressed his opinion of Dutch ingratitude and his own fidelity.
The Hollanders, on their part, struck several medals to commemorate the
same event, some of which were not destitute of invention. Upon one of
them, for instance, was represented an ape smothering her young ones to
death in her embrace, with the device, "Libertas ne its chara ut simiae
catuli;" while upon the reverse was a man avoiding smoke and falling into
the fire, with the inscription, "Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem."

Leicester found the usual sunshine at Greenwich. All the efforts of
Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst, had been insufficient to raise even a
doubt in Elizabeth's mind as to the wisdom and integrity by which his
administration of the Provinces had been characterised from beginning to
end. Those who had appealed from his hatre