their reach, and with which they were not to meddle. "Ne sutor ultra
crepidam," said the pedant.

Upon that one point his policy was made to turn. Spain held him in the
hollow of her hand. The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was
promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or
irritate a froward child. Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him
spellbound. Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he cease
to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express sympathy
with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a
finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky
Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England
had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of determined resistance
to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was
on his knees again. A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned
from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the
King as the worst enemy of Spain. The usual threat was made, the wand was
waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in pursuance
of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.

It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing
entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and
the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.

Yet Philip III. declared on his death-bed that he had never had a serious
intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.

The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional
material in the policy of James towards the Provinces. The diplomacy of
his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass of
controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind. Exactly at this
moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden to the
professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of Peter
Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds. Born in Cologne,
Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza. He had
written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had dedicated to
the States-General. But he was now accused of Arminianism, Socianism,
Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what. He defended himself in writing
against these various charges, and declared himself a believer in the
Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in the Atonement.