All such untruths contained matter so improbable, that it was most, strange that any person; having any sense, could imagine them correct.  Having thus slightly animadverted upon their wilfulness, unthankfulness, and bad government, and having, in very plain English, given them the lie, eight distinct and separate times upon a single page, she proceeded to inform them that she had recalled her cousin Leicester, having great cause to use his services in England, and not seeing how, by his tarrying there, he could either profit them or herself.  Nevertheless she protested herself not void of compassion for their estate, and for the pitiful condition of the great multitude of kind and godly people, subject to the miseries which, by the States government, were like to fall upon them, unless God should specially interpose; and she had therefore determined, for the time, to continue her subsidies, according to the covenant between them.  If, meantime, she should conclude a peace with Spain, she promised to them the same care for their country as for her own.

Accordingly the Earl, after despatching an equally ill-tempered letter to the States, in which he alluded, at unmerciful length, to all the old grievances, blamed them for the loss of Sluys, for which place he protested that they had manifested no more interest than if it had been San Domingo in Hispaniola, took his departure for Flushing.  After remaining there, in a very moody frame of mind, for several days, expecting that the States would, at least, send a committee to wait upon him and receive his farewells, he took leave of them by letter.  “God send me shortly a wind to blow me from them all,” he exclaimed—­a prayer which was soon granted—­and before the end of the year he was safely landed in England.  “These legs of mine,” said he, clapping his hands upon them as he sat in his chamber at Margate, “shall never go again into Holland.  Let the States get others to serve their mercenary turn, for me they shall not have.”  Upon giving up the government, he caused a medal to be struck in his own honour.  The device was a flock of sheep watched by an English mastiff.  Two mottoes—­“non gregem aed ingratos,” and “invitus desero”—­expressed his opinion of Dutch ingratitude and his own fidelity.  The Hollanders, on their part, struck several medals to commemorate the same event, some of which were not destitute of invention.  Upon one of them, for instance, was represented an ape smothering her young ones to death in her embrace, with the device, “Libertas ne its chara ut simiae catuli;” while upon the reverse was a man avoiding smoke and falling into the fire, with the inscription, “Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem.”