poor
soldiers. If they be not better maintained, being in this strange
country, there will be neither good service done, nor be without great
dishonour to her Majesty. . . . Well, you see the wants, and it is one
cause that will glad me to be rid of this heavy high calling, and wish me
at my poor cottage again, if any I shall find. But let her Majesty pay
them well, and appoint such a man as Sir William Pelham to govern them,
and she never wan more honour than these men here will do, I am
persuaded."

That the Earl was warmly urged by all most conversant with Netherland
politics to assume the government was a fact admitted by all. That he
manifested rather eagerness than reluctance on the subject, and that his
only hesitation arose from the proposed restraints upon the power, not
from scruples about accepting the power, are facts upon record. There is
nothing save his own assertion to show any backwardness on his part to
snatch the coveted prize; and that assertion was flatly denied by
Davison, and was indeed refuted by every circumstance in the case. It is
certain that he had concealed from Davison the previous prohibitions of
the Queen. He could anticipate much better than could Davison, therefore,
the probable indignation of the Queen. It is strange then that he should
have shut his eyes to it so wilfully, and stranger still that he should
have relied on the envoy's eloquence instead of his own to mitigate that
emotion. Had he placed his defence simply upon its true basis, the
necessity of the case, and the impossibility of carrying out the Queen's
intentions in any other way, it would be difficult to censure him; but
that he should seek to screen himself by laying the whole blame on a
subordinate, was enough to make any honest man who heard him hang his
head. "I meant not to do it, but Davison told me to do it, please your
Majesty, and if there was naughtiness in it, he said he would make it all
right with your Majesty." Such, reduced to its simplest expression, was
the defence of the magnificent Earl of Leicester.

And as he had gone cringing and whining to his royal mistress, so it was
natural that he should be brutal and blustering to his friend.

"By your means," said he, "I have fallen into her Majesty's deep
displeasure . . . . If you had delivered to her the truth of my
dealing, her Highness never could have conceived, as I perceive she doth
. . . . Nor doth her Majesty know how hardly I was drawn to accep