ere secured, and it
was not the part of wisdom to plunge into all the horrors of immediate
war in order to escape distant and problematical dangers; that might
arise when the truce should come to an end. If a truce were now made, the
kings of both France and England would be guarantees for its faithful
observance. They would take care that no wrong or affront was offered to
the States-General.

Maurice replied, with a sneer, to these sententious commonplaces derived
at second-hand from King James that great kings were often very
indifferent to injuries sustained by their friends. Moreover, there was
an eminent sovereign, he continued, who was even very patient under
affronts directly offered to himself. It was not very long since a
horrible plot had been discovered to murder the King of England, with his
wife, his children, and all the great personages of the realm. That this
great crime had been attempted under the immediate instigation of the
King of Spain was notorious to the whole world, and certainly no secret
to King James. Yet his Britannic Majesty had made haste to exonerate the
great criminal from all complicity in the crime; and had ever since been
fawning upon the Catholic king, and hankering for a family alliance with
him. Conduct like this the prince denounced in plain terms as cringing
and cowardly, and expressed the opinion that guarantees of Dutch
independence from such a monarch could hardly be thought very valuable.

These were terrible words for the representative of James to have hurled
in his face in full council by the foremost personage of the republic
Winwood fell into a furious passion, and of course there was a violent
scene, with much subsequent protesting and protocolling.

The British king insisted that the prince should make public amends for
the insult, and Maurice firmly refused to do anything of the kind. The
matter was subsequently arranged by some amicable concessions made by the
prince in a private letter to James, but there remained for the time a
abate of alienation between England and the republic, at which the French
sincerely rejoiced. The incident, however, sufficiently shows the point
of exasperation which the prince had reached, for, although choleric, he
was a reasonable man, and it was only because the whole course of the
negotiations had offended his sense of honour and of right that he had at
last been driven quite beyond self-control.

On the 13th of October, the envoy