planting of strangers, Spaniards, not unlike to tigers in their habitations; and so have we as just cause, for our own surety and our country, to join with the said states, and their countries, to preserve them so in their liberties, as the Spaniards, intending to conquer them, shall not also prosecute their intentions to conquer England." 66 Upon these grounds the English commissioners were to insist, by way of assurance to the States, principally upon these points: - 1. That they may be allowed to continue in arms, and a truce for a number of years be accorded. 2. That the people of the United Provinces may be governed as they now are, by the natural officers of every province. 3. That all strange soldiers be sent away from the low countries. But, Now, said Burleigh, "you may say that as by the former demands you have dealt specially for the States, so should you commit a great error if you should not specially require some necessary things for your sovereign. And for that purpose you shall require that no impediment be offered us by the king or his ministers; but that we may retain possession of the two towns of Flushing and Brill, according to such covenants as are made between us and the States. Secondly, that if the States shall, for their defence, have need to be supported with any number of English soldiers, that it may be lawful for them to wage every convenient number of English without charge of breach of covenant contained in our peace with Spain." * Sir Robert Cecil landed at Deippe on the 18th of February, 1597-8. † He proceeded without delay to Paris, having written to the king that he could not begin the conference without first speaking to his majesty. Of the expected ministers from the States, the i. e. to maintain and pay. + Birch, Neg. 97. ib. Cecil also wrote to his father on the 26th of February :-"I have met here with the prince, president of Rouen, a man of great credit and reputation, one that till mere necessity did force him, kept much hold here for this king; he afterwards retired and kept the parliament at Caen. He is learned, grave, of good person, good discourse, and well affectionate to England. His name is Claude Grollart." "He did visit me with great commissioners heard nothing; and, believing their delay to arise from " voluntary slackness," they proposed, after seeing what language the king should hold, to go back to England, "whereby the affairs might still be kept in dispute, which will be no loss to the queen to win time; and the scandal of unwillingness to treat (if faith be meant by the Spanish king) may yet be taken from her majesty, and laid upon them, who having made their sweet of other's sour, are fittest for the obliquity of practical and private partiality."* Cecil was very well received by Henry, of whom he had audience on the 21st of March. He told the king that Elizabeth had sent him "to communicate unto him her secret and princely thoughts, whensoever it should please him to discover his own disposition and judgment of this project of a general treaty, whereunto she had been so much invited by M. de Maise's propositions ; but, nevertheless, that she was so far from belief of any good meaning in the contrary party, as she still thought fit to defer all resolutions until she had fetched her true light from himself, who could best tell how great a stranger she was to this cause."† Henry answered by general declarations of attachment. But he told Cecil plainly, "that unless her majesty did make the war of another fashion, and follow it with a more constant resolution, the greater purse must overspread the less." To this reproval as to the manner of co-operating in the war, Cecil answered by accusing Henry of wishing the whole exertion to be And respect; and fell into familiar discourse with me of your lordship, whom he had known in England many years since, and hath had correspondence with your lordship, by letters, in Mr. Secretary Walsingham's time. being talking thereof, he desired me to tell your lordship by occasion, that when these troubles were like to grow by the league, you writ him a letter of advice, to stick fast to the king, and not to be doubtful, though he saw difficulties; for you did hold it for a true oracle, that the kings on earth are like the sun; and that such as do seek to usurp, are like falling stars: for the sun, although it be eclipsed and offuscated with mists and clouds, at length they are dispersed, where the others are but figures of stars in the eye's view, and prove no more but exhalations, which suddenly dissolve and fall to the earth, where they are consumed." Cabala, 123. t p. 108. * 8th of March. p. 101. made in France, without reference to the interests of England, as affected by the maritime force of Spain. Henry had no disposition to come to close quarters; he entertained Cecil for an hour and a half with many pleasant and familiar discourses of his opinion of divers of his subjects, sent him to amuse himself with his sister and her ladies, and appointed another day for hearing him at length. In this second audience Cecil professed to consider the intention to treat separately as a calumny, pressed for information as to the extent of the offers of Spain, the necessity of taking care of the States. Henry heard all this with great attention, and answered, first, that "he was glad that Cecil was not a Venetian †; and that he loved to negotiate with the earl of Essex, for he did leave circumstances so as he saw he served a wise prince.—Rhetoric was for pedants." He said that Spain had offered every thing but Calais, and they must necessarily be desirous of peace with England, to avoid attacks upon their marine; and he threw out the idea of more active co-operation in the war. "Well," saith he, “it is a strange message, when a man is in need and lacks help, to hear of others' lacks, and former helps. If the queen will propound her mind, what war she would have to be made," saith he, "I will urge nothing but upon good consent; and because you told me yesterday that I never liked any thing but my own ways, I say this. If my plots be not allowed good, let the queen of England, if she be alienated from a peace, set down the way of a safe war in which the Spaniard may be beaten indeed; and then will I be found reasonable. But to lose myself and my kingdom, to be mutinied against by my people, it is hard for me to be put to it." Cecil greatly discouraged Henry's suggestion of an Catherine, afterwards wife of Henry II., duke of Lorraine. She was a zealous protestant, and resisted all the attempts of her husband to convert her. Les Dates, xiii. 417. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine (n. s. viii. 235.) supposes that Henry alluded to the long-winded and theoretical harrangues in which Venetian negotiators indulged. Birch. Negotiations, 119. "To deliver," he enlarged co-operation in the war. said, "the queen's mind for a war was not the ground of our commission, we being sent to see the bottom of the likelihood or safety of a treaty." The king did not conceal his suspicion, well enough grounded, that Elizabeth only sought " to win time." In this audience, and in subsequent conferences with the French ministers *, Cecil pressed. for a consideration of the security of the United Provinces; but he did not absolutely repudiate the notion of a separate treaty, so as it might be consistent with that object; and he laid great stress, especially in his conference with the deputies of the States, upon Elizabeth's determination to ged rid of the enormous and disproportionate charge of the war. "If for their cause," he said, "the war be continued, they must think to bear the greater share of the burden.” Notwithstanding the friendliness of Henry's language, he had in truth made up his mind to disregard both England and the States. This appeared not only from the very strong expressions which he used in describing his own necessities, but in a dispatch from the cardinal of Austria to the king of Spain, which an accident had thrown into the hands of the English government, and which Cecil read to Henry himself. This information might have brought matters speedily to a point. There was no room for complicated negotiation; above all things, as the matter strikes me, there was no advantage in delay. The honour and interests of England required an immediate answer to the demand, which she was justified in making peremptorily, as to the intentions of the French king; and this the queen saw. After she had received intelligence of what was going on at Vervins, she issued fresh instructions to her commissioners. In these (which have not been published before) she acknowledged that she "had more cause to deal openly and roundly than she thought she Birch. Neg. p. 125. + p. 140. Albert, governor of the Netherlands, son of the emperor Maximilian. should have had." Yet Elizabeth could not entirely cast off her love of mystification. She enjoined Cecil and his colleague "to deal with the king in formality and generality;" and it was not until after they had temporised as long as they conveniently could, that they were to ask of the king the simple question, whether he was or was not negotiating with Spain for a separate peace, without special provision for England and the States. Upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer, they were to enumerate the financial as well as political succour, which Henry had received from the queen, and to reproach him severely for his breach of faith. * Henry did not appear absolutely bent upon peace, provided that Elizabeth would take a greater share in the war. "Will the queen," he asked†, "join with me to make peace or war with Spain, now power is come? Or will she assist me in such sort, as may be for our safety and common profit? You speak nothing directly to me. If she would make me a good offer, she should see whether I were so tied, that I would not break the treaty." The representatives of Elizabeth did not give a very precise answer to this appeal, by which they were "driven to the wall." This is the expression of the English commissioners, used in the official report §, wherein they lay before the queen their plans "for winning time, so as to allow of her taking some good resolution, if she should find it fit, to disorder the present facility of the French king's peace, which, being once disjointed, will not so easily be set together. Your majesty will see that the States will do as much in it to ease you as can be found reasonable, rather than that your majesty should leave them.”|| The commissioners' account of their final audience T of Henry is curious, and recapitulates well the arguCotton Calig. Elizabeth to the commissioners, 17th of March, 1597. E ix. p. 435. † p. 147. That is, power to the Spanish ministers to treat. p. 151. Nantes, April the 10th, 1598. Birch's Memoirs, ii. 374. |