, other less influential
counsellors of the crown--even the upright and accomplished Buckhurst,
who had so often proved his friendship for the States--were in favour of
negotiation. There were many conferences with meagre results. The
Englishmen urged that the time had come for the States to repay the
queen's advances, to relieve her from future subsidies, to assume the
payment of the garrisons in the cautionary towns, and to furnish a force
in defence of England when attacked. Such was the condition of the
kingdom, they said--being, as it was, entirely without fortified
cities--that a single battle would imperil the whole realm, so that it
was necessary to keep the enemy out of it altogether.

These arguments were not unreasonable, but the inference was surely
illogical. The special envoys from the republic had not been instructed
to treat about the debt. This had been the subject of perpetual
negotiation. It was discussed almost every day by the queen's
commissioners at the Hague and by the States' resident minister at
London. Olden-Barneveld and the admiral had been sent forth by the Staten
in what in those days was considered great haste to prevent a conclusion
of a treaty between their two allies and the common enemy. They had been
too late in France, and now, on arriving in England, they found that
government steadily drifting towards what seemed the hopeless shipwreck
of a general peace.

What must have been the grief of Olden-Barneveld when he heard from the
lips of the enlightened Buckhurst that the treaty of 1585 had been
arranged to expire--according to the original limitation--with a peace,
and that as the States could now make peace and did not choose to do so,
her Majesty must be considered as relieved from her contract of alliance,
and as justified in demanding repayment of her advances!

To this perfidious suggestion what could the States' envoy reply but that
as a peace such as the treaty of 1585 presupposed--to wit, with security
for the Protestant religion and for the laws and liberties of the
provinces--was impossible, should the States now treat with the king or
the cardinal?

The envoys had but one more interview with, the queen, in which she was
more benignant in manner but quite as peremptory in her demands. Let the
States either thoroughly satisfy her as to past claims and present
necessities, or let them be prepared for her immediate negotiation with
the enemy. Should she decide to treat, s