Buckhurst emerged from
confinement, received the order of the garter and the Earldom of Dorset,
and on the death of Burghley succeeded that statesman in the office of
Lord-Treasurer. Such was the substantial recognition of the merits of a
man who was now disgraced for the conscientious discharge of the most
important functions that had yet been confided to him.

It would be a thankless and superfluous task to give the details of the
renewed attempt, during a few months, made by Leicester to govern the
Provinces. His second administration consisted mainly of the same
altercations with the States, on the subject of sovereignty, the same
mutual recriminations and wranglings, that had characterized the period
of his former rule. He rarely met the States in person, and almost never
resided at the Hague, holding his court at Middleburg, Dort, or Utrecht,
as his humour led him.

The one great feature of the autumn of 1587 was the private negotiation
between Elizabeth and the Duke of Parma.

Before taking a glance at the nature of those secrets, however, it is
necessary to make a passing allusion to an event which might have seemed
likely to render all pacific communications with Spain, whether secret or
open, superfluous.

For while so much time had been lost in England and Holland, by
misunderstandings and jealousies, there was one Englishman who had not
been losing time. In the winter and early spring of 1587, the Devonshire
skipper had organized that expedition which he had come to the
Netherlands, the preceding autumn, to discuss. He meant to aim a blow at
the very heart of that project which Philip was shrouding with so much
mystery, and which Elizabeth was attempting to counteract by so much
diplomacy.

On the 2nd April, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth with four ships
belonging to the Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the merchants
of London, and other private individuals. It was a bold buccaneering
expedition--combining chivalrous enterprise with the chance of enormous
profit--which was most suited to the character of English adventurers at
that expanding epoch. For it was by England, not by Elizabeth, that the
quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one. It was England, not its
sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with
the great enemy of European liberty. It was the spirit of self-help, of
self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great
work of