No doubt these communications of Parma to the King were made upon the faith of an agent not over-scrupulous, and of no elevated or recognised rank in diplomacy.  It must be borne in mind, however, that he had been made use of by both parties; perhaps because it would be easy to throw off, and discredit, him whenever such a step should be convenient; and that, on the other hand, coming fresh from Burghley and the rest into the presence of the keen-eyed Farnese, he would hardly invent for his employer a budget of falsehoods.  That man must have been a subtle negotiator who could outwit such a statesman as Burghley—­and the other counsellors of Elizabeth, and a bold one who could dare to trifle on a momentous occasion with Alexander of Parma.

Leicester thought Burghley very much his friend, and so thought Davison and Heneage; and the Lord-Treasurer had, in truth, stood stoutly by the Earl in the affair of the absolute governorship;—­“a matter more severe and cumbersome to him and others,” said Burghley, “than any whatsoever since he was a counsellor.”  But there is no doubt that these negotiations were going forward all the spring and summer, that they were most detrimental to Leicester’s success, and that they were kept—­so far as it was possible—­a profound secret from him, from Walsingham, and from the States-General.  Nothing was told them except what their own astuteness had discovered beforehand; and the game of the counsellors—­so far as their attitude towards Leicester and Walsingham was concerned—­ seems both disingenuous and impolitic.

Parma, it was to be feared, was more than a match for the English governor-general in the field; and it was certainly hopeless for poor old Comptroller Croft, even though backed by the sagacious Burghley, to accomplish so great an amount of dissimulation in a year as the Spanish cabinet, without effort, could compass in a week.  Nor were they attempting to do so.  It is probable that England was acting towards Philip in much better faith than he deserved, or than Parma believed; but it is hardly to be wondered at that Leicester should think himself injured by being kept perpetually in the dark.

Elizabeth was very impatient at not receiving direct letters from Parma, and her anxiety on the subject explains much of her caprice during the quarrel about the governor-generalahip.  Many persons in the Netherlands thought those violent scenes a farce, and a farce that had been arranged with Leicester beforehand.  In this they were mistaken; for an examination of the secret correspondence of the period reveals the motives—­which to contemporaries were hidden—­of many strange transactions.  The Queen was, no doubt, extremely anxious, and with cause, at the tempest slowly gathering over her head; but the more the dangers thickened, the more was her own official language to those in high places befitting the sovereign of England.