ere requested to withdraw. The vote of each
councillor was demanded. Buckhurst, who, as the Queen's
representative--together with Wilkes and John Norris--had a seat in the
council, refused to vote. "It was a matter," he discreetly observed with
which "he had not been instructed by her Majesty to intermeddle." Norris
and Wilkes also begged to be excused from voting, and, although earnestly
urged to do so by the whole council, persisted in their refusal. Both
measures were then carried.

No sooner was the vote taken, than an English courier entered the
council-chamber, with pressing despatches from Lord Leicester. The
letters were at once read. The Earl announced his speedy arrival, and
summoned both the States-General and the council to meet him at Dort,
where his lodgings were already taken. All were surprised, but none more
than Buckhurst, Wilkes, and Norris; for no intimation of this sudden
resolution had been received by them, nor any answer given to various
propositions, considered by her Majesty as indispensable preliminaries to
the governor's visit.

The council adjourned till after dinner, and Buckhurst held conference
meantime with various counsellors and deputies. On the reassembling of
the board, it was urged by Barneveld, in the name of the States, that the
election of Prince Maurice should still hold good. "Although by these
letters," said he, "it would seem that her Majesty had resolved upon the
speedy return of his Excellency, yet, inasmuch as the counsels and
resolutions of princes are often subject to change upon new occasion, it
does not seem fit that our late purpose concerning Prince Maurice should
receive any interruption."

Accordingly, after brief debate, both resolutions, voted in the morning,
were confirmed in the afternoon.

"So now," said Wilkes, "Maurice is general of all the forces, 'et quid
sequetur nescimus.'"

But whatever else was to follow, it was very certain that Wilkes would
not stay. His great enemy had sworn his destruction, and would now take
his choice, whether to do him to death himself, or to throw him into the
clutch of the ferocious Hohenlo. "As for my own particular," said the
counsellor, "the word is go, whosoever cometh or cometh not," and he
announced to Walsingham his intention of departing without permission,
should he not immediately receive it from England. "I shall stay to be
dandled with no love-days nor leave-takings," he observed.

But Leicester had delayed