required to "forswear his native province in order to be true to the
generality." They deliberated in common for the general good, and were
not hampered by instructions from the provincial diets, nor compelled to
refer to those diets for decision when important questions were at issue.
It was an independent executive committee for the whole republic.

But Leicester had made it unpopular. His intrigues, in the name of
democracy, to obtain possession of sovereign power, to inflame the lower
classes against the municipal magistracies, and to excite the clergy to
claim a political influence to which they were not entitled and which was
most mischievous in its effects, had exposed the state council, with
which he had been in the habit of consulting, to suspicion.

The Queen of England, by virtue of her treaty had the right to appoint
two of her subjects to be members of the council. The governor of her
auxiliary forces was also entitled to a seat there. Since the
malpractices of Leicester and the danger to which the country had been,
subjected in consequence had been discovered, it was impossible that
there should be very kindly feeling toward England in the public mind,
however necessary a sincere alliance between the two countries was known
to be for the welfare of both.

The bickering of the two English councillors, Wilkes and Bodley, and of
the governor of the English contingent with the Hollanders, was
incessant. The Englishmen went so far as to claim the right of veto upon
all measures passed by the council, but the States-General indignantly
replied that the matters deliberated and decided upon by that board were
their own affairs, not the state affairs of England. The two members and
the military officer who together represented her Majesty were entitled
to participate in the deliberations and to vote with their brother
members. For them to claim the right, however, at will to annul the
proceedings was an intolerable assumption, and could not be listened to
for a moment. Certainly it would have been strange had two Dutchmen
undertaken to veto every measure passed by the Queen's council at
Richmond or Windsor, and it was difficult to say on what article of the
contract this extraordinary privilege was claimed by Englishmen at the
Hague.

Another cause of quarrel was the inability of the Englishmen to
understand the language in which the debates of the state council were
held.

According to a custom not entirely u