With a ruined country, starving and mutinous troops, a bankrupt exchequer, and a desperate and pauper population, Alexander Farnese was not unwilling to gain time by simulated negotiations for peace.  It was strange, however, that so sagacious a monarch as the Queen of England should suppose it for her interest to grant at that moment the very delay which was deemed most desirable by her antagonist.

Yet it was not wounded affection alone, nor insulted pride, nor startled parsimony, that had carried the fury of the Queen to such a height on the occasion of Leicester’s elevation to absolute government.  It was still more, because the step was thought likely to interfere with the progress of those negotiations into which the Queen had allowed herself to be drawn.

A certain Grafigni—­a Genoese merchant residing much in London and in Antwerp, a meddling, intrusive, and irresponsible kind of individual, whose occupation was gone with the cessation of Flemish trade—­had recently made his appearance as a volunteer diplomatist.  The principal reason for accepting or rather for winking at his services, seemed to be the possibility of disavowing him, on both sides, whenever it should be thought advisable.  He had a partner or colleague, too, named Bodman, who seemed a not much more creditable negotiator than himself.  The chief director of the intrigue was, however, Champagny, brother of Cardinal Granvelle, restored to the King’s favour and disposed to atone by his exuberant loyalty for his heroic patriotism on a former and most memorable occasion.  Andrea de Loo, another subordinate politician, was likewise employed at various stages of the negotiation.

It will soon be perceived that the part enacted by Burghley, Hatton, Croft, and other counsellors, and even by the Queen herself, was not a model of ingenuousness towards the absent Leicester and the States-General.  The gentlemen sent at various times to and from the Earl and her Majesty’s government; Davison, Shirley, Vavasor, Heneage, and the rest—­had all expressed themselves in the strongest language concerning the good faith and the friendliness of the Lord-Treasurer and the Vice-Chamberlain, but they were not so well informed as they would have been, had they seen the private letters of Parma to Philip II.

Walsingham, although kept in the dark as much as it was possible, discovered from time to time the mysterious practices of his political antagonists, and warned the Queen of the danger and dishonour she was bringing upon herself.  Elizabeth, when thus boldly charged, equivocated and stormed alternately.  She authorized Walsingham to communicate the secrets—­which he had thus surprised—­to the States-General, and then denied having given any such orders.

In truth, Walsingham was only entrusted with such portions of the negotiations as he had been able, by his own astuteness, to divine; and as he was very much a friend to the Provinces and to Leicester, he never failed to keep them instructed, to the best of his ability.  It must be confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of contemplation at the present day.