The negotiations between England and Spain were deferred, however, for a brief space, and a special message was despatched to the Hague as to the arrangement of the debt.  “Peace at once with Philip,” said the queen, “or else full satisfaction of my demands.”

Now it was close dealing between such very thrifty and acute bargainers as the queen and the Netherland republic.

Two years before, the States had offered to pay twenty thousand pounds a year on her Majesty’s birthday so long as the war should last, and after a peace, eighty thousand pounds annually for four years.  The queen, on her part, fixed the sum total of the debt at nearly a million and a half sterling, and required instant payment of at least one hundred thousand pounds on account, besides provision for a considerable annual refunding, assumption by the States of the whole cost of the garrisons in the cautionary towns, and assurance of assistance in case of an attack upon England.  Thus there was a whole ocean between the disputants.

Vere and Gilpin were protocolling and marshalling accounts at the Hague, and conducting themselves with much arrogance and bitterness, while, meantime, Barneveld had hardly had time to set his foot on his native shores before he was sent back again to England at the head of another solemn legation.  One more effort was to be made to arrange this financial problem and to defeat the English peace party.

The offer of the year 1596 just alluded to was renewed and instantly rejected.  Naturally enough, the Dutch envoys were disposed, in the exhausting warfare which was so steadily draining their finances, to pay down as little as possible on the nail, while providing for what they considered a liberal annual sinking fund.

The English, on the contrary, were for a good round sum in actual cash, and held the threatened negotiation with Spain over the heads of the unfortunate envoys like a whip.

So the queen’s counsellors and the republican envoys travelled again and again over the well-worn path.

On the 29th June, Buckhurst took Olden-Barneveld into his cabinet, and opened his heart to him, not as a servant of her Majesty, he said, but as a private Englishman.  He was entirely for peace.  Now that peace was offered to her Majesty, a continuance of the war was unrighteous, and the Lord God’s blessing could not be upon it.  Without God’s blessing no resistance could be made by the queen nor by the States to the enemy, who was ten times more powerful than her Majesty in kingdoms, provinces, number of subjects, and money.  He had the pope, the emperor, the Dukes of Savoy and Lorraine, and the republic of Genoa, for his allies.  He feared that the war might come upon England, and that they might be fated on one single day to win or lose all.  The queen possessed no mines, and was obliged to carry on the war by taxing her people.  The king had ever-flowing fountains in his mines; the queen nothing but a stagnant pool, which, when all the water was pumped out, must in the end be dry.  He concluded, therefore, that as her Majesty had no allies but the Netherlands, peace was best for England, and advisable for the provinces.  Arrangements could easily be made to limit the absolute authority of Spain.