, within her
kingdom.

But her Majesty was obdurate. "How am I to defend myself?" she cried;
"how are the affairs of Ireland to be provided for? how am I ever to get
back my money? who is to pay the garrisons of Brill and Flushing?" And
with this she left the apartment, saying that her counsellors would
confer with the envoys.'

From the beginning to the end of the interview the queen was in a very
evil temper, and took no pains to conceal her dissatisfaction with all
the world.

Now there is no doubt whatever that the subsidies furnished by England to
the common cause were very considerable, amounting in fourteen years,
according to the queen's calculation, to nearly fourteen hundred thousand
pounds sterling. But in her interviews with the republican statesmen she
was too prone to forget that it was a common cause, to forget that the
man who had over and over again attempted her assassination, who had
repeatedly attempted the invasion of her realms with the whole strength
of the most powerful military organization in the world, whose dearest
wish on earth was still to accomplish her dethronement and murder, to
extirpate from England the religion professed by the majority of living
Englishmen, and to place upon her vacant throne a Spanish, German, or
Italian prince, was as much her enemy as he was the foe of his ancient
subjects in the Netherlands. At that very epoch Philip was occupied in
reminding the pope that the two had always agreed as to the justice of
the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the English crown, and calling on
his Holiness to sustain those pretensions, now that she had been obliged,
in consequence of the treaty with the Prince of Bearne, to renounce her
right to reign over France.

Certainly it was fair enough for the queen and her, counsellors to stand
out for an equitable arrangement of the debt; but there was much to
dispute in the figures. When was ever an account of fifteen years'
standing adjusted, whether between nations or individuals, without much
wrangling? Meantime her Majesty held excellent security in two thriving
and most important Netherland cities. But had the States consented to
re-establish the Spanish authority over the whole of their little
Protestant republic, was there an English child so ignorant of arithmetic
or of history as not to see how vast would be the peril, and how
incalculable the expense, thus caused to England?

Yet besides the Cecils and the lord high admiral