s the famous Consults of Cardinal Granvelle had been. It
was the custom of the States to consider the men who surrounded the Earl
as needy and unprincipled renegades and adventurers. It was the policy of
his advisers to represent the merchants and the States--which mainly
consisted of, or were controlled by merchants--as a body of corrupt,
selfish, greedy money-getters.

The calumnies put in circulation against the States by Reingault and his
associates grew at last so outrageous, and the prejudice created in the
mind of Leicester and his immediate English adherents so intense, that it
was rendered necessary for the States, of Holland and Zeeland to write to
their agent Ortell in London, that he might forestall the effect of these
perpetual misrepresentations on her Majesty's government. Leicester, on
the other hand, under the inspiration; of his artful advisers, was
vehement in his entreaties that Ortell should be sent away from England.

The ablest and busiest of the opposition-party, the "nimblest head" in
the States-General was the ex-Advocate of Holland; Paul Buys. This man
was then the foremost statesman in, the Netherlands. He had been the
firmest friend to the English alliance; he had resigned his office when
the States were-offering the sovereignty to France, and had been on the
point of taking service in Denmark. He had afterwards been prominent in
the legation which offered the sovereignty to Elizabeth, and, for a long
time, had been the most firm, earnest, and eloquent advocate of the
English policy. Leicester had originally courted him, caressed him,
especially recommended him to the Queen's favour, given him money--as he
said, "two hundred pounds sterling thick at a time"--and openly
pronounced him to be "in ability above all men." "No man hath ever sought
a man," he said, "as I have sought P. B."

The period of their friendship was, however, very brief. Before many
weeks had passed there was no vituperative epithet that Leicester was not
in the daily habit of bestowing upon Paul. The Earl's vocabulary of abuse
was not a limited one, but he exhausted it on the head of the Advocate.
He lacked at last words and breath to utter what was like him. He
pronounced his former friend "a very dangerous man, altogether hated of
the people and the States;"--"a lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions; a
most covetous, bribing fellow, caring for nothing but to bear the sway
and grow rich;"--"a man who had played many parts