ne my work faithfully thus far; it is now for your Majesty to
take it thoroughly to heart; and embrace it with the warmth with which an
affair involving so much of your own interests deserves to be embraced."

He avowed that without full confidence in his sovereign's sympathy he
would never have conceived the project. "I confess that the enterprise is
great," he said, "and that by many it will be considered rash. Certainly
I should not have undertaken it, had I not felt certain of your Majesty's
full support."

But he was already in danger of being forced to abandon the whole
scheme--although so nearly carried into effect--for want of funds. "The
million promised," he wrote, "has arrived in bits and morsels, and with
so many ceremonies, that I haven't ten crowns at my disposal. How I am to
maintain even this handful of soldiers--for the army is diminished to
such a mere handful that it would astonish your Majesty--I am unable to
imagine. It would move you to witness their condition. They have suffered
as much as is humanly possible."

Many of the troops, indeed, were deserting, and making their escape,
beggared and desperate, into France, where, with natural injustice, they
denounced their General, whose whole heart was occupied with their
miseries, for the delinquency of his master, whose mind was full of other
schemes.

"There past this way many Spanish soldiers," wrote Stafford from Paris,
"so poor and naked as I ever saw any. There have been within this
fortnight two hundred at a time in this town, who report the extremity of
want of victuals in their camp, and that they have been twenty-four
months without pay. They exclaim greatly upon the Prince of Parma.
Mendoza seeks to convey them away, and to get money for them by all means
he can."

Stafford urged upon his government the propriety of being at least as
negligent as Philip had showed himself to be of the Spaniards. By
prohibiting supplies to the besieging army, England might contribute,
negatively, if not otherwise, to the relief of Antwerp. "There is no
place," he wrote to Walsingham, "whence the Spaniards are so thoroughly
victualled as from us. English boats go by sixteen and seventeen into
Dunkirk, well laden with provisions."

This was certainly not in accordance with the interests nor the
benevolent professions of the English ministers.

These supplies were not to be regularly depended upon however. They were
likewise not to be had without paying