History of the United Netherlands, 1587d | Page 7

the last proof of the Duke's
sincerity, than even Burghley and Croft had been. Disregarding all the
warnings of Walsingham, she renewed her expressions of boundless
confidence in the wily Italian. "We do assure you," wrote the Lords,
"and so you shall do well to avow it to the Duke upon our honours, that
her Majesty saith she thinketh both their minds to accord upon one
good and Christian meaning, though their ministers may perchance
sound upon a discord." And she repeated her resolution to send over
her commissioners, so soon as the Duke had satisfied her as to the
hostile preparations.
We have now seen the good faith of the English Queen towards the
Spanish government. We have seen her boundless trust in the sincerity
of Farnese and his master. We have heard the exuberant professions of
an honest intention to bring about a firm and lasting peace, which fell

from the lips of Farnese and of his confidential agents. It is now
necessary to glide for a moment into the secret cabinet of Philip, in
order to satisfy ourselves as to the value of all those professions. The
attention of the reader is solicited to these investigations, because the
year 1587 was a most critical period in the history of English, Dutch,
and European liberty. The coming year 1588 had been long spoken of
in prophecy, as the year of doom, perhaps of the destruction of the
world, but it was in 1587, the year of expectation and preparation, that
the materials were slowly combining out of which that year's history
was to be formed.
And there sat the patient letter-writer in his cabinet, busy with his
schemes. His grey head was whitening fast. He was sixty years of age.
His frame was slight, his figure stooping, his digestion very weak, his
manner more glacial and sepulchral than ever; but if there were a hard-
working man in Europe, that man was Philip II. And there he sat at his
table, scrawling his apostilles. The fine innumerable threads which
stretched across the surface of Christendom, and covered it as with a
net, all converged in that silent cheerless cell. France was kept in a state
of perpetual civil war; the Netherlands had been converted into a
shambles; Ireland was maintained in a state of chronic rebellion;
Scotland was torn with internal feuds, regularly organized and paid for
by Philip; and its young monarch--"that lying King of Scots," as
Leicester called him--was kept in a leash ready to be slipped upon
England, when his master should give the word; and England herself
was palpitating with the daily expectation of seeing a disciplined horde
of brigands let loose upon her shores; and all this misery, past, present,
and future, was almost wholly due to the exertions of that grey-haired
letter-writer at his peaceful library-table.
At the very beginning of the year the King of Denmark had made an
offer to Philip of mediation. The letter, entrusted to a young Count de
Rantzan, had been intercepted by the States--the envoy not having
availed himself, in time, of his diplomatic capacity, and having in
consequence been treated, for a moment, like a prisoner of war. The
States had immediately addressed earnest letters of protest to Queen
Elizabeth, declaring that nothing which the enemy could do in war was
half so horrible to them as the mere mention of peace. Life, honour,
religion, liberty, their all, were at stake, they said, and would go down

in one universal shipwreck, if peace should be concluded; and they
implored her Majesty to avert the proposed intercession of the Danish
King. Wilkes wrote to Walsingham denouncing that monarch and his
ministers as stipendiaries of Spain, while, on the other hand, the Duke
of Parma, after courteously thanking the King for his offer of mediation,
described him to Philip as such a dogged heretic, that no good was to
be derived from him, except by meeting his fraudulent offers with an
equally fraudulent response. There will be nothing lost, said Alexander,
by affecting to listen to his proposals, and meantime your Majesty must
proceed with the preparations against England. This was in the first
week of the year 1587.
In February, and almost on the very day when Parma was writing those
affectionate letters to Elizabeth, breathing nothing but peace, he was
carefully conning Philip's directions in regard to the all-important
business of the invasion. He was informed by his master, that one
hundred vessels, forty of them of largest size, were quite ready,
together with 12,000 Spanish infantry, including 3000 of the old legion,
and that there were volunteers more than enough. Philip had also taken
note, he said, of Alexander's advice as to choosing the season when the
crops in England had just been got in, as