wn of day. The Advocate, without loss of time, took his departure
for Delft, a step which was followed, shortly afterwards, by Maurice.

Nor was this the only daring--stroke which the Earl had meditated. During
the progress of the secret negotiations with Parma, he had not neglected
those still more secret schemes to which he had occasionally made
allusion. He had determined, if possible, to obtain possession of the
most important cities in Holland and Zeeland. It was very plain to him,
that he could no longer hope, by fair means, for the great authority once
conferred upon him by the free will of the States. It was his purpose,
therefore, by force and stratagem to recover his lost power. We have
heard the violent terms in which both the Queen and the Earl denounced
the men who accused the English government of any such intention. It had
been formally denied by the States-General that Barneveld had ever used
the language in that assembly with which he had been charged. He had only
revealed to them the exact purport of the letter to Junius, and of the
Queen's secret instructions to Leicester. Whatever he may have said in
private conversation, and whatever deductions he may have made among his
intimate friends, from the admitted facts in the case, could hardly be
made matters of record. It does not appear that he, or the statesmen who
acted with him, considered the Earl capable of a deliberate design to
sell the cities, thus to be acquired, to Spain, as the price of peace for
England. Certainly Elizabeth would have scorned such a crime, and was
justly indignant at rumours prevalent to that effect; but the wrath of
the Queen and of her favourite were, perhaps, somewhat simulated, in
order to cover their real mortification at the discovery of designs on
the part of the Earl which could not be denied. Not only had they been at
last compelled to confess these negotiations, which for several months
had been concealed and stubbornly denied, but the still graver plots of
the Earl to regain his much-coveted authority had been, in a startling
manner, revealed. The leaders of the States-General had a right to
suspect the English Earl of a design to reenact the part of the Duke of
Anjou, and were justified in taking stringent measures to prevent a
calamity, which, as they believed, was impending over their little
commonwealth. The high-handed dealings of Leicester in the city of
Utrecht have been already described. The most respectabl