time to make their necessary arrangements.

"We have hurt and slain very near eight hundred," said Sir Roger
Williams. "We had not powder to fight two hours. There was a breach of
almost four hundred paces, another of three score, another of fifty,
saltable for horse and men. We had lain continually eighteen nights all
on the breaches. He gave us honourable composition. Had the state of
England lain on it, our lives could not defend the place, three hours,
for half the rampires were his, neither had we any pioneers but
ourselves. We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us."

On the 5th August Parma entered the city. Roger Williams with his gilt
morion rather battered, and his great plume of feathers much
bedraggled-was a witness to the victor's entrance. Alexander saluted
respectfully an officer so well known to him by reputation, and with some
complimentary remarks urged him to enter the Spanish service, and to take
the field against the Turks.

"My sword," replied the doughty Welshman, "belongs to her royal Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth, above and before all the world. When her Highness has no
farther use for it, it is at the service of the King of Navarre."
Considering himself sufficiently answered, the Duke then requested Sir
Roger to point out Captain Baskerville--very conspicuous by a greater
plume of feathers than even that of the Welshman himself--and embraced
that officer; when presented to him, before all his staff. "There serves
no prince in Europe a braver man than this Englishman," cried Alexander,
who well knew how to appreciate high military qualities, whether in his
own army or in that of his foes.

The garrison then retired, Sluy's became Spanish, and a capacious
harbour, just opposite the English coast, was in Parma's hands. Sir Roger
Williams was despatched by Leicester to bear the melancholy tidings to
his government, and the Queen was requested to cherish the honest
Welshman, and at least to set him on horseback; for he was of himself not
rich enough to buy even a saddle. It is painful to say that the captain
did not succeed in getting the horse.

The Earl was furious in his invectives against Hohenlo, against Maurice,
against the States, uniformly ascribing the loss of Sluy's to negligence
and faction. As for Sir John Norris, he protested that his misdeeds in
regard to this business would, in King Henry VIII.'s time, have "cost him
his pate."

The loss of Sluys was the beginning an