that the
rupture, when it occurs, was caused by us, not by the English. He has
been complaining of Cardinal Allen's book, and I told him that I didn't
understand a word of English, and knew nothing whatever of the matter."

It has been already seen that the Duke had declared, on his word of
honour, that he had never heard of the famous pamphlet. Yet at that very
moment letters were lying in his cabinet, received more than a fortnight
before from Philip, in which that monarch thanked Alexander for having
had the Cardinal's book translated at Antwerp! Certainly few English
diplomatists could be a match for a Highness so liberal of his word of
honour.

But even Dr. Dale had at last convinced himself--even although the Duke
knew nothing of bull or pamphlet--that mischief was brewing against
England. The sagacious man, having seen large bodies of Spaniards and
Walloons making such demonstrations of eagerness to be led against his
country, and "professing it as openly as if they were going to a fair or
market," while even Alexander himself could "no more hide it than did
Henry VIII. when he went to Boulogne," could not help suspecting
something amiss.

His colleague, however, Comptroller Croft, was more judicious, for he
valued himself on taking a sound, temperate, and conciliatory view of
affairs. He was not the man to offend a magnanimous neighbour--who meant
nothing unfriendly by regarding his manoeuvres with superfluous
suspicion. So this envoy wrote to Lord Burghley on the 2nd August
(N.S.)--let the reader mark the date--that, "although a great doubt had
been conceived as to the King's sincerity, . . . . yet that discretion
and experience induced him--the envoy--to think, that besides the
reverent opinion to be had of princes' oaths, and the general incommodity
which will come by the contrary, God had so balanced princes' powers in
that age, as they rather desire to assure themselves at home, than with
danger to invade their neighbours."

Perhaps the mariners of England--at that very instant exchanging
broadsides off the coast of Devon and Dorset with the Spanish Armada, and
doing their best to protect their native land from the most horrible
calamity which had ever impended over it--had arrived at a less reverent
opinion of princes' oaths; and it was well for England in that supreme
hour that there were such men as Howard and Drake, and Winter and
Frobisher, and a whole people with hearts of oak to defend her, whil