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, while bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards were doing their best to imperil her existence.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards
Fitter to obey than to command
Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God
Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty
Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity
Never did statesmen know better how not to do
Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety
Simple truth was highest skill
Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand
That crowned criminal, Philip the Second

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK history united Netherlands, 1588 ***

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