King James was preparing to slide away from the
position which had been three times changed to make it suitable for him.
His indignation was hot.

"Sir Henry Wotton," he said, "has communicated to me his last despatches
from Newmarket. I am in the highest degree amazed that after all our
efforts at accommodation, with so much sacrifice to the electors, the
provinces, and ourselves, they are trying to urge us there to consent
that the promise be not made to the Kings of France and Great Britain as
mediators, although the proposition came from the Spanish side. After we
had renounced, by desire of his Majesty, the right to refer the promise
to the Treaty of Xanten, it was judged by both kings to be needful and
substantial that the promise be made to their Majesties. To change this
now would be prejudicial to the kings, to the electors, the duchies, and
to our commonwealth; to do us a wrong and to leave us naked. France
maintains her position as becoming and necessary. That Great Britain
should swerve from it is not to be digested here. You will do your utmost
according to my previous instructions to prevent any pressure to this
end. You will also see that the name of the Emperor is mentioned neither
in the preamble nor the articles of the treaty. It would be contrary to
all our policy since 1610. You may be firmly convinced that malice is
lurking under the Emperor's name, and that he and the King of Spain and
their adherents, now as before, are attempting a sequestration. This is
simply a pretext to bring those principalities and provinces into the
hands of the Spaniards, for which they have been labouring these thirty
years. We are constantly cheated by these Spanish tricks. Their intention
is to hold Wesel and all the other places until the conclusion of the
Italian affair, and then to strike a great blow."

Certainly were never words more full of sound statesmanship, and of
prophecy too soon to be fulfilled, than these simple but pregnant
warnings. They awakened but little response from the English government
save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of
German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave it
longer in the hands of Spain. As if the Advocate had not proved to
demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to
give up the game altogether.

His influence in France was always greater than in England, and this had
likewise been the case with Will