sent a special courier, after
them to express his regrets at the unsatisfactory termination to their
mission: "My mistress knows very well," said he, "that she is an absolute
princess, and that, when her ministers have done their extreme duty, she
wills what she wills."

The negotiations between England and Spain were deferred, however, for a
brief space, and a special message was despatched to the Hague as to the
arrangement of the debt. "Peace at once with Philip," said the queen, "or
else full satisfaction of my demands."

Now it was close dealing between such very thrifty and acute bargainers
as the queen and the Netherland republic.

Two years before, the States had offered to pay twenty thousand pounds a
year on her Majesty's birthday so long as the war should last, and after
a peace, eighty thousand pounds annually for four years. The queen, on
her part, fixed the sum total of the debt at nearly a million and a half
sterling, and required instant payment of at least one hundred thousand
pounds on account, besides provision for a considerable annual refunding,
assumption by the States of the whole cost of the garrisons in the
cautionary towns, and assurance of assistance in case of an attack upon
England. Thus there was a whole ocean between the disputants.

Vere and Gilpin were protocolling and marshalling accounts at the Hague,
and conducting themselves with much arrogance and bitterness, while,
meantime, Barneveld had hardly had time to set his foot on his native
shores before he was sent back again to England at the head of another
solemn legation. One more effort was to be made to arrange this financial
problem and to defeat the English peace party.

The offer of the year 1596 just alluded to was renewed and instantly
rejected. Naturally enough, the Dutch envoys were disposed, in the
exhausting warfare which was so steadily draining their finances, to pay
down as little as possible on the nail, while providing for what they
considered a liberal annual sinking fund.

The English, on the contrary, were for a good round sum in actual cash,
and held the threatened negotiation with Spain over the heads of the
unfortunate envoys like a whip.

So the queen's counsellors and the republican envoys travelled again and
again over the well-worn path.

On the 29th June, Buckhurst took Olden-Barneveld into his cabinet, and
opened his heart to him, not as a servant of her Majesty, he said, but as
a private Englishm