n close friendship with
France, whoever might be its ruler. An alliance between that kingdom and
Spain would be instantaneous ruin to the Republic. With the French and
English sovereigns united with the Provinces, the cause of the
Reformation might triumph, the Spanish world-empire be annihilated,
national independence secured.

Henry assured the Ambassador that the treaty of Vervins was
indispensable, but that he would never desert his old allies. In proof of
this, although he had just bound himself to Spain to give no assistance
to the Provinces, open or secret, he would furnish them with thirteen
hundred thousand crowns, payable at intervals during four years. He was
under great obligations to his good friends the States, he said, and
nothing in the treaty forbade him to pay his debts.

It was at this period too that Barneveld was employed by the King to
attend to certain legal and other private business for which he professed
himself too poor at the moment to compensate him. There seems to have
been nothing in the usages of the time or country to make the
transaction, innocent in itself, in any degree disreputable. The King
promised at some future clay, when he should be more in funds, to pay him
a liberal fee. Barneveld, who a dozen years afterwards received 20,000
florins for his labour, professed that he would much rather have had one
thousand at the time.

Thence the Advocate, accompanied by his colleague, Justinus de Nassau,
proceeded to England, where they had many stormy interviews with
Elizabeth. The Queen swore with many an oath that she too would make
peace with Philip, recommended the Provinces to do the same thing with
submission to their ancient tyrant, and claimed from the States immediate
payment of one million sterling in satisfaction of their old debts to
her. It would have been as easy for them at that moment to pay a thousand
million. It was at last agreed that the sum of the debt should be fixed
at L800,000, and that the cautionary towns should be held in Elizabeth's
hands by English troops until all the debt should be discharged. Thus
England for a long time afterwards continued to regard itself, as in a
measure the sovereign and proprietor of the Confederacy, and Barneveld
then and there formed the resolve to relieve the country of the incubus,
and to recover those cautionary towns and fortresses at the earliest
possible moment. So long as foreign soldiers commanded by military
governors exi