the country, was rather inclined, at this period, to favour the French
party; a policy which was strenuously furthered by Villiers and by Sainte
Aldegonde.

Besides the information furnished to the English government, as to the
state of feeling and resources of the Netherlands, by Buys, Meetkerk, and
William Herle, Walsingham relied much upon the experienced eye and the
keen biting humour of Roger Williams.

A frank open-hearted Welshman, with no fortune but his sword, but as true
as its steel, he had done the States much important service in the hard-
fighting days of Grand Commander Requesens and of Don John of Austria.
With a shrewd Welsh head under his iron morion, and a stout Welsh heart
under his tawny doublet, he had gained little but hard knocks and a dozen
wounds in his campaigning, and had but recently been ransomed, rather
grudgingly by his government, from a Spanish prison in Brabant. He was
suffering in health from its effects, but was still more distressed in
mind, from his sagacious reading of the signs of the times. Fearing that
England was growing lukewarm, and the Provinces desperate, he was
beginning to find himself out of work, and was already casting about him
for other employment. Poor, honest, and proud, he had repeatedly
declined to enter the Spanish service. Bribes, such as at a little later
period were sufficient to sully conspicuous reputations and noble names,
among his countrymen in better circumstances than his own, had been
freely but unsuccessfully offered him. To serve under any but the
English or States' flag in the Provinces he scorned; and he thought the
opportunity fast slipping away there for taking the Papistical party in
Europe handsomely by the beard. He had done much manful work in the
Netherlands, and was destined to do much more; but he was now
discontented, and thought himself slighted. In more remote regions of