Parma, on his part, informed his master that there could be no doubt that the Queen and the majority of her council abhorred the war, and that already much had been gained by the fictitious negotiation.  Lord-Treasurer Burghley had been interposing endless delays and difficulties in the way of every measure proposed for the relief of Lord Leicester, and the assistance rendered him had been most lukewarm.  Meantime the Prince had been able, he said, to achieve much success in the field, and the English had done nothing to prevent it.  Since the return of Grafigni and Bodman, however, it was obvious that the English government had disowned these non-commissioned diplomatists.  The whole negotiation and all the negotiators were now discredited, but there was no doubt that there had been a strong desire to treat, and great disappointment at the result.  Grafigni and Andrea de Loo had been publishing everywhere in Antwerp that England would consider the peace as made, so soon as his Majesty should be willing to accept any propositions.

His Majesty, meanwhile, sat in his cabinet, without the slightest intention of making or accepting any propositions save those that were impossible.  He smiled benignantly at his nephew’s dissimulation and at the good results which it had already produced.  He approved of gaining time, he said, by fictitious negotiations and by the use of a mercantile agent; for, no doubt, such a course would prevent the proper succours from being sent to the Earl of Leicester.  If the English would hand over to him the cautionary towns held by them in Holland and Zeeland, promise no longer to infest the seas, the Indies, and the Isles, with their corsairs, and guarantee the complete obedience to their King and submission to the holy Catholic Church of the rebellious Provinces, perhaps something might be done with them; but, on the whole, he was inclined to think that they had been influenced by knavish and deceitful motives from the beginning.  He enjoined it upon Parma, therefore, to proceed with equal knavery—­taking care, however, not to injure his reputation—­and to enter into negotiations wherever occasion might serve, in order to put the English off their guard and to keep back the reinforcements so imperatively required by Leicester.

And the reinforcements were indeed kept back.  Had Burghley and Croft been in the pay of Philip II. they could hardly have served him better than they had been doing by the course pursued.  Here then is the explanation of the shortcomings of the English government towards Leicester and the States during the memorable spring and summer of 1586.  No money, no soldiers, when most important operations in the field were required.  The first general of the age was to be opposed by a man who had certainly never gained many laurels as a military chieftain, but who was brave and confident, and who, had he been faithfully supported by the government which sent him to the Netherlands, would have had his antagonist