until such time as adequate concessions on
the religious question could be obtained from Spain. She was unwilling to
plunge into the peril and expense of a war with the strongest power in
the world. She disliked the necessity under which she should be placed of
making repeated applications to her parliament, and of thus fostering the
political importance of the Commons; she was reluctant to encourage
rebellious subjects in another land, however just the cause of their
revolt. She felt herself vulnerable in Ireland and on the Scottish
border. Nevertheless, the Spanish power was becoming so preponderant,
that if the Netherlands were conquered, she could never feel a moment's
security within her own territory. If the Provinces were annexed to
France, on the other hand, she could not contemplate with complacency the
increased power thus placed in the hands of the treacherous and
jesuitical house of Valois.

The path of the Queen was thickly strewed with peril: her advisers were
shrewd, far-seeing, patriotic, but some of them were perhaps over
cautious. The time had, however, arrived when the danger was to be faced,
if the whole balance of power in Europe were not to come to an end, and
weak states, like England and the Netherlands, to submit to the tyranny
of an overwhelming absolutism. The instinct of the English sovereign, of
English statesmen, of the English nation, taught them that the cause of
the Netherlands was their own. Nevertheless, they were inclined to look
on yet a little longer, although the part of spectator had become an
impossible one. The policy of the English government was not treacherous,
although it was timid. That of the French court was both the one and the
other, and it would have been better both for England and the Provinces,
had they more justly appreciated the character of Catharine de' Medici
and her son.

The first covert negotiations between Henry and the States had caused
much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France. Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
Paris, as representative of Philip. He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to
which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League. His salary
was large, his way of living magnific