of Parma, and as Leicester was continually writing earnest letters against peace, the efforts of these counsellors had slackened.  Bodman found them all, on his arrival, anxious as he said, “to get their necks out of the matter;” declaring everything which had been done to be pure matter of accident, entirely without the concurrence of the Queen, and each seeking to outrival the other in the good graces of her Majesty.  Grafigni informed Bodman, however, that Lord Cobham was quite to be depended upon in the affair, and would deal with him privately, while Lord Burghley would correspond with Andrea de Loo at Antwerp.  Moreover, the servant of Comptroller Croft would direct Bodman as to his course, and would give him daily instructions.

Now it so happened that this servant of Croft, Norris by name, was a Papist, a man of bad character, and formerly a spy of the Duke of Anjou.  “If your Lordship or myself should use such instruments as this,” wrote Walsingham to Leicester, “I know we should bear no small reproach; but it is the good hap of hollow and doubtful men to be best thought of.”  Bodman thought the lords of the peace-faction and their adherents not sufficiently strong to oppose the other party with success.  He assured Farnese that almost all the gentlemen and the common people of England stood ready to risk their fortunes and to go in person to the field to maintain the cause of the Queen and religious liberty; and that the chance of peace was desperate unless something should turn the tide, such as, for example, the defeat of Drake, or an invasion by Philip of Ireland or Scotland.

As it so happened that Drake was just then engaged in a magnificent career of victory, sweeping the Spanish Main and startling the nearest and the most remote possessions of the King with English prowess, his defeat was not one of the cards to be relied on by the peace-party in the somewhat deceptive game which they had commenced.  Yet, strange to say, they used, or attempted to use, those splendid triumphs as if they had been disasters.

Meantime there was an active but very secret correspondence between Lord Cobham, Lord Burghley, Sir James Croft, and various subordinate personages in England, on the one side, and Champagny, President Richardot, La Motte, governor of Gravelines, Andrea de Loo, Grafigni, and other men in the obedient Provinces, more or less in Alexander’s confidence, on the other side.  Each party was desirous of forcing or wheedling the antagonist to show his hand.  “You were employed to take soundings off the English coast in the Duke of Norfolk’s time,” said Cobham to La Motte:  “you remember the Duke’s fate.  Nevertheless, her Majesty hates war, and it only depends on the King to have a firm and lasting peace.”

“You must tell Lord Cobham,” said Richardot to La Motte, “that you are not at liberty to go into a correspondence, until assured of the intentions of Queen Elizabeth.  Her Majesty ought to speak first, in order to make her good-will manifest,” and so on.