s service--and that when he set foot
in the country he had no more expected to be made Governor of the
Netherlands than to be made King of Spain. Certainly he had been paying
dear for the honour, if honour it was, and he had not intended on setting
forth for the Provinces to ruin himself, for the sake of an empty title.
His motives--and he was honest, when he so avowed them--were motives of
state at least as much as of self-advancement. "I have no cause," he
said, "to have played the fool thus far for myself; first, to have her
Majesty's displeasure, which no kingdom in the world could make me
willingly deserve; next, to undo myself in my later days; to consume all
that should have kept me all my life in one half year. But I must thank
God for all, and am most heartily grieved at her Majesty's heavy
displeasure. I neither desire to live, nor to see my country with it."

And at this bitter thought, he began to sigh like furnace, and to shed
the big tears of penitence.

"For if I have not done her Majesty good service at this time," he said,
"I shall never hope to do her any, but will withdraw me into some
out-corner of the world, where I will languish out the rest of my few-too
many-days, praying ever for her Majesty's long and prosperous life, and
with this only comfort to live an exile, that this disgrace hath happened
for no other cause but for my mere regard for her Majesty's estate."

Having painted this dismal picture of the probable termination to his
career--not in the hope of melting Burghley but of touching the heart of
Elizabeth--he proceeded to argue the point in question with much logic
and sagacity. He had satisfied himself on his arrival in the Provinces,
that, if he did not take the governor-generalship some other person
would; and that it certainly was for the interest of her Majesty that her
devoted servant, rather than an indifferent person, should be placed in
that important position. He maintained that the Queen had intimated, to
him, in private, her willingness that he should accept the office in
question provided the proposition should come from the States and not
from her; he reasoned that the double nature of his functions--being
general and counsellor for her, as well as general and counsellor for the
Provinces--made his acceptance of the authority conferred on him almost
indispensable; that for him to be merely commander over five thousand
English troops, when an abler soldier than himself, Si