es
had pursued the phantom of a Spanish marriage for his son. To achieve
this mighty object, he had perverted the whole policy of the realm; he
had grovelled to those who despised him, had repaid attempts at wholesale
assassination with boundless sycophancy. It is difficult to imagine
anything more abject than the attitude of James towards Philip. Prince
Henry was dead, but Charles had now become Prince of Wales in his turn,
and there was a younger infanta whose hand was not yet disposed of.

So long as the possible prize of a Most Catholic princess was dangling
before the eyes of the royal champion of Protestantism, so long there was
danger that the Netherlanders might wake up some fine morning and see the
flag of Spain waving over the walls of Flushing, Brielle, and Rammekens.

It was in the interest of Spain too that the envoys of James at the Hague
were perpetually goading Barneveld to cause the States' troops to be
withdrawn from the duchies and the illusory treaty of Xanten to be
executed. Instead of an eighth province added to the free Netherlands,
the result of such a procedure would have been to place that territory
enveloping them in the hands of the enemy; to strengthen and sharpen the
claws, as the Advocate had called them, by which Spain was seeking to
clutch and to destroy the Republic.

The Advocate steadily refused to countenance such policy in the duchies,
and he resolved on a sudden stroke to relieve the Commonwealth from the
incubus of the English mortgage.

James was desperately pushed for money. His minions, as insatiable in
their demands on English wealth as the parasites who fed on the
Queen-Regent were exhaustive of the French exchequer, were greedier than
ever now that James, who feared to face a parliament disgusted with the
meanness of his policy and depravity of his life, could not be relied
upon to minister to their wants.

The Advocate judiciously contrived that the proposal of a compromise
should come from the English government. Noel de Caron, the veteran
ambassador of the States in London, after receiving certain proposals,
offered, under instructions' from Barneveld, to pay L250,000 in full of
all demands. It was made to appear that the additional L250,000 was in
reality in advance of his instructions. The mouths of the minions watered
at the mention of so magnificent a sum of money in one lump.

The bargain was struck. On the 11th June 1616, Sir Robert Sidney, who had
become Lord