holic prince out of the duchies than they were themselves. But while
thus taking a bond of them as it were for the entire fulfilment of the
primary enterprise, he accepted with cordiality, and almost with
gratitude, their proposition of a close alliance of the Republic with
himself and with the Protestant powers which James had so superciliously
rejected.

It would have been difficult to inflict a more petty and, more studied
insult upon the Republic than did the King of Great Britain at that
supreme moment by his preposterous claim of sovereign rights over the
Netherlands. He would make no treaty with them, he said, but should he
find it worth while to treat with his royal brother of France, he should
probably not shut the door in their faces.

Certainly Henry's reply to the remonstrances of the ambassadors in regard
to the India trade was as moderate as that of James had been haughty and
peremptory in regard to the herring fishery. It is however sufficiently
amusing to see those excellent Hollanders nobly claiming that "the sea
was as free as air" when the right to take Scotch pilchards was in
question, while at the very same moment they were earnest for excluding
their best allies and all the world besides from their East India
monopoly. But Isaac Le Maire and Jacques Le Roy had not lain so long
disguised in Zamet's house in Paris for nothing, nor had Aerssens so
completely "broke the neck of the French East India Company" as he
supposed. A certain Dutch freebooter, however, Simon Danzer by name, a
native of Dordrecht, who had been alternately in the service of Spain,
France, and the States, but a general marauder upon all powers, was
exercising at that moment perhaps more influence on the East India trade
than any potentate or commonwealth.

He kept the seas just then with four swift-sailing and well-armed
vessels, that potent skimmer of the ocean, and levied tribute upon
Protestant and Catholic, Turk or Christian, with great impartiality. The
King of Spain had sent him letters of amnesty and safe-conduct, with
large pecuniary offers, if he would enter his service. The King of France
had outbid his royal brother and enemy, and implored him to sweep the
seas under the white flag.

The States' ambassador begged his masters to reflect whether this
"puissant and experienced corsair" should be permitted to serve Spaniard
or Frenchman, and whether they could devise no expedient for turning him
into another track. "He