History of the United Netherlands, 1598 | Page 9

He made no secret of
his opinions in favour of negotiation, said that the contracts made by
monarchs should always be interpreted reasonably, and pronounced a
warm eulogy on the course pursued by the King of France. It was his
Majesty's duty, he said, to seize the best opportunity for restoring
repose to his subjects and his realms, and it was the duty of other
sovereigns to do the same.
The envoys replied that they were not disposed at that moment to sit in
judgment upon the king's actions. They would content themselves with
remarking that in their opinion even kings and princes were bound by
their, contracts, oaths, and pledges before God and man; and with this
wholesome sentiment they took leave of the lord high treasurer.
They left London immediately, on the last day of May, without,
passports. or despatches of recal, and embarked at Gravesend in the
midst of a gale of wind.

Lord Essex, the sincere friend of the republic, was both surprised and
disturbed at their sudden departure, and sent a special courier, after
them to express his regrets at the unsatisfactory termination to their
mission: "My mistress knows very well," said he, "that she is an
absolute princess, and that, when her ministers have done their extreme
duty, she wills what she wills."
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.
This highly figurative view of the subject--more becoming to the author
of Ferrex and Porrex than to so, experienced a