opportunity to serve, and no lack but to trust to her
gracious acceptation, I now feel that how good, how honourable, how
profitable soever it be, it is turned to a worse part than if I had
broken all her commissions and commandments, to the greatest harm, and
dishonour, and danger, that may be imagined against her person, state,
and dignity."

He protested, not without a show of reason, that he was like to be worse
punished "for well-doing than any man that had committed a most heinous
or traitorous offence," and he maintained that if he had not accepted the
government, as he had done, "the whole State had been gone and wholly
lost." All this--as we have seen--had already been stoutly urged by
Davison, in the very face of the tempest, but with no result, except to
gain the enmity of both parties to the quarrel. The ungrateful Leicester
now expressed confidence that the second go-between would be more adroit
than the first had proved. "The causes why," said he, "Mr. Davison could
have told--no man better--but Mr. Heneage can now tell, who hath sought
to the uttermost the bottom of all things. I will stand to his report,
whether glory or vain desire of title caused me to step one foot forward
in the matter. My place was great enough and high enough before, with
much less trouble than by this, besides the great indignation of her
Majesty . . . . If I had overslipt the good occasion then in danger, I
had been worthy to be hanged, and to be taken for a most lewd servant to
her Majesty, and a dishonest wretch to my country."

But diligently as Heneage had sought to the bottom of all things, he had
not gained the approbation of Sidney. Sir Philip thought that the new man
had only ill botched a piece of work that had been most awkwardly
contrived from the beginning. "Sir Thomas Heneage," said he, "hath with
as much honesty, in my opinion done as much hurt as any man this
twelve-month hath done with naughtiness. But I hope in God, when her
Majesty finds the truth of things, her graciousness will not utterly,
overthrow a cause so behooveful and costly unto her."

He briefly warned the government that most disastrous effects were likely
to ensue, if the Earl should be publicly disgraced, and the recent action
of the States reversed. The penny-wise economy, too, of the Queen, was
rapidly proving a most ruinous extravagance. "I only cry for Flushing;"
said Sidney, "but, unless the monies be sent over, there will some
terrible acc