seek, by all the means you may,
examining the Count Hollock, or any other party in this matter, to
discover and to sift out how this malicious imputation hath been wrought;
for we have reason to think that it hath grown out of some cunning device
to stay the Earl's coming, and to discourage him from the continuance of
his service in those countries."

And there the Queen was undoubtedly in the right. Hohenlo was resolved,
if possible, to make the Earl's government of the Netherlands impossible.
There was nothing in the story however; and all that by the most diligent
"sifting" could ever be discovered, and all that the Count could be
prevailed upon to confess, was an opinion expressed by him that if he had
gone with Leicester to England, it might perhaps have fared ill with him.
But men were given to loose talk in those countries. There was great
freedom of tongue and pen; and as the Earl, whether with justice or not,
had always been suspected of strong tendencies to assassination, it was
not very wonderful that so reckless an individual as Hohenlo should
promulgate opinions on such subjects, without much reserve. "The number
of crimes that have been imputed to me," said Leicester, "would be
incomplete, had this calumny not been added to all preceding ones." It is
possible that assassination, especially poisoning, may have been a more
common-place affair in those days than our own. At any rate, it is
certain that accusations of such crimes were of ordinary occurrence. Men
were apt to die suddenly if they had mortal enemies, and people would
gossip. At the very same moment, Leicester was deliberately accused not
only of murderous intentions towards Hohenlo, but towards Thomas Wilkes
and Count Lewis William of Nassau likewise. A trumpeter, arrested in
Friesland, had just confessed that he had been employed by the Spanish
governor of that Province, Colonel Verdugo, to murder Count Lewis, and
that four other persons had been entrusted with the same commission. The
Count wrote to Verdugo, and received in reply an indignant denial of the
charge. "Had I heard of such a project," said the Spaniard, "I would, on
the contrary, have given you warning. And I give you one now." He then
stated, as a fact known to him on unquestionable authority, that the Earl
of Leicester had assassins at that moment in his employ to take the life
of Count Lewis, adding that as for the trumpeter, who had just been
hanged for the crime suborned by the