fore mine
answer be understood. Therefore I beseech you to help me to return, and
not thus to lose her Majesty's favour for my good desert, wasting here my
mind, body, my wits, wealth, and all; with continual toils, taxes, and
troubles, more than I am able to endure."

But besides his instructions to smooth and expostulate, in which he had
succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill; Buckhurst had received a
still more difficult commission. He had been ordered to broach the
subject of peace, as delicately as possible, but without delay; first
sounding the leading politicians, inducing them to listen to the Queen's
suggestions on the subject, persuading them that they ought to be
satisfied with the principles of the pacification of Ghent, and that it
was hopeless for the Provinces to continue the war with their mighty
adversary any longer.

Most reluctantly had Buckhurst fulfilled his sovereign's commands in this
disastrous course. To talk to the Hollanders of the Ghent pacification
seemed puerile. That memorable treaty, ten years before, had been one of
the great landmarks of progress, one of the great achievements of William
the Silent. By its provisions, public exercise of the reformed religion
had been secured for the two Provinces of Holland and Zeeland, and it had
been agreed that the secret practice of those rites should be elsewhere
winked at, until such time as the States-General, under the auspices of
Philip II., should otherwise ordain. But was it conceivable that now,
after Philip's authority had been solemnly abjured, and the reformed
worship had become the public, dominant religion, throughout all the
Provinces,--the whole republic should return to the Spanish dominion, and
to such toleration as might be sanctioned by an assembly professing
loyalty to the most Catholic King?

Buckhurst had repeatedly warned the Queen, in fervid and eloquent
language, as to the intentions of Spain. "There was never peace well
made," he observed, "without a mighty war preceding, and always, the
sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace."

"If ever prince had cause," he continued, "to think himself beset with
doubt and danger, you, sacred Queen, have most just cause not only to
think it, but even certainly to believe it. The Pope doth daily plot
nothing else but how he may bring to pass your utter overthrow; the
French King hath already sent you threatenings of revenge, and though for
that pretende