Leicester found the usual sunshine at Greenwich.  All the efforts of Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst, had been insufficient to raise even a doubt in Elizabeth’s mind as to the wisdom and integrity by which his administration of the Provinces had been characterised from beginning to end.  Those who had appealed from his hatred to the justice of their sovereign, had met with disgrace and chastisement.  But for the great Earl; the Queen’s favour was a rock of adamant.  At a private interview he threw himself at her feet, and with tears and sobs implored her not to receive him in disgrace whom she had sent forth in honour.  His blandishments prevailed, as they had always done.  Instead, therefore, of appearing before the council, kneeling, to answer such inquiries as ought surely to have been instituted, he took his seat boldly among his colleagues, replying haughtily to all murmurs by a reference to her Majesty’s secret instructions.

The unhappy English soldiers, who had gone forth under his banner in midsummer, had been returning, as they best might, in winter, starving, half-naked wretches, to beg a morsel of bread at the gates of Greenwich palace, and to be driven away as vagabonds, with threats of the stock.  This was not the fault of the Earl, for he had fed them with his own generous hand in the Netherlands, week after week, when no money for their necessities could be obtained from the paymasters.  Two thousand pounds had been sent by Elizabeth to her soldiers when sixty-four thousand pounds arrearage were due, and no language could exaggerate the misery to which these outcasts, according to eye-witnesses of their own nation, were reduced.

Lord Willoughby was appointed to the command, of what remained of these unfortunate troops, upon—­the Earl’s departure.  The sovereignty of the Netherlands remained undisputed with the States.  Leicester resigned his, commission by an instrument dated 17/27 December, which, however, never reached the Netherlands till April of the following year.  From that time forth the government of the republic maintained the same forms which the assembly had claimed for it in the long controversy with the governor-general, and which have been sufficiently described.

Meantime the negotiations for a treaty, no longer secret, continued.  The Queen; infatuated as ever, still believed in the sincerity of Farnese, while that astute personage and his master were steadily maturing their schemes.  A matrimonial alliance was secretly projected between the King of Scots and Philip’s daughter, the Infants Isabella, with the consent of the Pope and the whole college of cardinals; and James, by the whole force of the Holy League, was to be placed upon the throne of Elizabeth.  In the case of his death, without issue, Philip was to succeed quietly to the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland.  Nothing could be simpler or more rational, and accordingly these arrangements were the table-talk at Rome, and met with general approbation.