History of the United Netherlands, 1587b | Page 3

precious than the one she wore on earth, nevertheless one cannot repress one's natural emotions. I believe firmly that this cruel deed will be the concluding crime of the many which that Englishwoman has committed, and that our Lord will be pleased that she shall at last receive the chastisement which she has these many long years deserved, and which has been reserved till now, for her greater ruin and confusion."--[Parma to Philip IL, 22 March. 1587. (Arch. de Simancas, MS.)]--And with this, the Duke proceeded to discuss the all important and rapidly-preparing invasion of England. Farnese was not the man to be deceived by the affected reluctance of Elizabeth before Mary's scaffold, although he was soon to show that he was himself a master in the science of grimace. For Elizabeth--more than ever disposed to be friends with Spain and Rome, now that war to the knife was made inevitable--was wistfully regarding that trap of negotiation, against which all her best friends were endeavouring to warn her. She was more ill-natured than ever to the Provinces, she turned her back upon the Warnese, she affronted Henry III. by affecting to believe in the fable of his envoy's complicity in the Stafford conspiracy against her life.
"I pray God to open her eyes," said Walsingham, "to see the evident peril of the course she now holdeth . . . . If it had pleased her to have followed the advice given her touching the French ambassador, our ships had been released . . . . but she has taken a very strange course by writing a very sharp letter unto the French King, which I fear will cause him to give ear to those of the League, and make himself a party with them, seeing so little regard had to him here. Your Lordship may see that our courage doth greatly increase, for that we make no difficulty to fall out with all the world . . . . . I never saw her worse affected to the poor King of Navarre, and yet doth she seek in no sort to yield contentment to the French King. If to offend all the world;" repeated the Secretary bitterly, "be it good cause of government, then can we not do amiss . . . . . I never found her less disposed to take a course of prevention of the approaching mischiefs toward this realm than at this present. And to be plain with you, there is none here that hath either credit or courage to deal effectually with her in any of her great causes."
Thus distracted by doubts and dangers, at war with her best friends, with herself, and with all-the world, was Elizabeth during the dark days and months which, preceded and followed the execution of the Scottish Queen. If the great fight was at last to be fought triumphantly through, it was obvious that England was to depend upon Englishmen of all ranks and classes, upon her prudent and far-seeing statesmen, upon her nobles and her adventurers, on her Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman blood ever mounting against, oppression, on Howard and Essex, Drake and Williams, Norris, and Willoughby, upon high-born magnates, plebeian captains, London merchants, upon yeomen whose limbs were made in England, and upon Hollanders and Zeelanders whose fearless mariners were to swarm to the protection of her coasts, quite as much in that year of anxious expectation as upon the great Queen herself. Unquestionable as were her mental capacity and her more than woman's courage, when fairly, brought face, to face with the danger, it was fortunately not on one man or woman's brain and arm that England's salvation depended in that crisis of her fate.
As to the Provinces, no one ventured to speak very boldly in their defence. "When I lay before her the peril," said Walsingham, "she scorneth at it. The hope of a peace with Spain has put her into a most dangerous security." Nor would any man now assume responsibility. The fate of Davison--of the man who had already in so detestable a manner been made the scape-goat for Leicester's sins in the Netherlands, and who had now been so barbarously sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders in regard to the death-warrant, had sickened all courtiers and counsellors for the time. "The late severe, dealing used by her Highness towards Mr. Secretary Davison," said Walsingham to Wilkes, "maketh us very circumspect and careful not to proceed in anything but wherein we receive direction from herself, and therefore you must not find it strange if we now be more sparing than heretofore hath been accustomed."
Such being the portentous state of the political atmosphere, and such the stormy condition of the royal mind, it may be supposed that the interviews of the Netherland envoys