d for nearly six months.

This has already been made sufficiently clear from the private letters of
most responsible persons. That these soldiers were starving, deserting;
and pillaging, was, alas! too true; but the envoys of the States hardly
expected to be censured by her Majesty, because she had neglected to pay
her own troops. It was one of the points concerning which they had been
especially enjoined to complain, that the English cavalry, converted into
highwaymen by want of pay, had been plundering the peasantry, and we have
seen that Thomas Wilkes had "pawned his carcase" to provide for their
temporary relief.

With regard to the insinuation that prominent personages in the country
had been tampered with by the enemy, the envoys were equally astonished
by such an attack. The great Deventer treason had not yet been heard of
in England for it had occurred only a week before this first
interview--but something of the kind was already feared; for the slippery
dealings of York and Stanley with Tassis and Parma, had long been causing
painful anxiety, and had formed the subject of repeated remonstrances on
the part of the 'States' to Leicester and to the Queen. The deputies were
hardly, prepared therefore to defend their own people against dealing
privately with the King of Spain. The only man suspected of such
practices was Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault,
whom the Earl had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances
of the States, who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now
in prison, and threatened with capital punishment.

To suppose that Buys or Barneveld, Roorda, Meetkerk, or any other leading
statesman in the Netherlands, was contemplating a private arrangement
with Philip II., was as ludicrous a conception as to imagine Walsingham a
pensioner of the Pope, or Cecil in league with the Duke of Guise. The end
and aim of the States' party was war. In war they not only saw the safety
of the reformed religion, but the only means of maintaining the
commercial prosperity of the commonwealth. The whole correspondence of
the times shows that no politician in the country dreamed of peace,
either by public or secret negotiation. On the other hand--as will be
made still clearer than ever--the Queen was longing for peace, and was
treating for peace at that moment through private agents, quite without
the knowledge of the States, and in spite of her indignant disavowals in
he