commission of his crime. It was
now believed that the enemy was preparing for a sudden assault upon
Ostend, with the connivance, it was feared, of a certain portion of the
English garrison. The intelligence was at once conveyed to her Majesty's
Government by Sir Edward Norris, and they determined to take a lesson
from past experience. Norris was at once informed that in view of the
attack which he apprehended, his garrison should be strengthened by five
hundred men under Sir Conyers Clifford from certain companies in
Flushing, and that other reinforcements should be sent from the English
troops in Normandy. The governor was ordered to look well after his
captains and soldiers, to remind them, in the queen's name, of their duty
to herself and to the States, to bid all beware of sullying the English
name, to make close investigations into any possible intrigues of the
garrison with the enemy, and, should any culprits be found, to bring them
at once to condign punishment.

The queen, too, determined that there should be no blighting of English
honour, if she could prevent it by her warnings, indited with her own
hand a characteristic letter to Sir Edward Norris, to accompany the more
formal despatch of Lord Burghley. Thus it ran "Ned!--

"Though you have some tainted sheep among your flock, let not that serve
for excuse for the rest. We trust you are so carefully regarded as nought
shall be left for your excuses, but either ye lack heart or want will;
for of fear we will not make mention, as that our soul abhors, and we
assure ourselves you will never discern suspicion of it. Now or never let
for the honour of us and our nation, each man be so much of bolder heart
as their cause is good, and their honour must be according, remembering
the old goodness of our God, who never yet made us fail His needful help,
who ever bless you as I with my prince's hand beseech Him."

The warnings and preparations proved sufficiently effective, and the
great schemes with which the new royal governor of the Netherlands was
supposed to be full--a mere episode in which was the conquest of
Ostend--seemed not so formidable as their shadows had indicated. There
was, in the not very distant future, to be a siege of Ostend, which the
world would not soon forget, but perhaps the place would not yield to a
sudden assault. Its resistance, on the contrary, might prove more
protracted than was then thought possible. But the chronicle of events
must no