lands; six
months long, the Provinces, left in a condition which might have become
anarchy, had been saved by the wise government of the States-General; six
months long the English soldiers had remained unpaid by their sovereign;
and now for six weeks the honest, eloquent, intrepid, but gentle
Buckhurst had done his best to conciliate all parties, and to mould the
Netherlanders into an impregnable bulwark for the realm of England. But
his efforts were treated with scorn by the Queen. She was still maddened
by a sense of the injuries done by the States to Leicester. She was
indignant that her envoy should have accepted such lame apologies for the
4th of February letter; that he should have received no better atonement
for their insolent infringements of the Earl's orders during his absence;
that he should have excused their contemptuous proceedings and that, in
short, he should have been willing to conciliate and forgive when he
should have stormed and railed. "You conceived, it seemeth," said her
Majesty, "that a more sharper manner of proceeding would have exasperated
matters to the prejudice of the service, and therefore you did think it
more fit to wash the wounds rather with water than vinegar, wherein we
would rather have wished, on the other side, that you had better
considered that festering wounds had more need of corrosives than
lenitives. Your own judgment ought to have taught that such a alight and
mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate and void of consideration
as the said Estates have showed themselves toward us, is the ready way to
increase their contempt."

The envoy might be forgiven for believing that at any rate there would be
no lack of corrosives or vinegar, so long as the royal tongue or pen
could do their office, as the unfortunate deputies had found to their
cost in their late interviews at Greenwich, and as her own envoys in the
Netherlands were perpetually finding now. The Queen was especially
indignant that the Estates should defend the tone of their letters to the
Earl on the ground that he had written a piquant epistle to them. "But
you can manifestly see their untruths in naming it a piquant letter,"
said Elizabeth, "for it has no sour or sharp word therein, nor any clause
or reprehension, but is full of gravity and gentle admonition. It
deserved a thankful answer, and so you may maintain it to them to their
reproof."

The States doubtless thought that the loss of Deventer and, with