revolt. She felt herself vulnerable in Ireland and on the Scottish
border. Nevertheless, the Spanish power was becoming so preponderant,
that if the Netherlands were conquered, she could never feel a moment's
security within her own territory. If the Provinces were annexed to
France, on the other hand, she could not contemplate with complacency
the increased power thus placed in the hands of the treacherous and
jesuitical house of Valois.

The path of the Queen was thickly strewed with peril: her advisers were
shrewd, far-seeing, patriotic, but some of them were perhaps over
cautious. The time had, however, arrived when the danger was to be
faced, if the whole balance of power in Europe were not to come to an
end, and weak states, like England and the Netherlands, to submit to the
tyranny of an overwhelming absolutism. The instinct of the English
sovereign, of English statesmen, of the English nation, taught them that
the cause of the Netherlands was their own. Nevertheless, they were
inclined to look on yet a little longer, although the part of spectator
had become an impossible one. The policy of the English government was
not treacherous, although it was timid. That of the French court was
both the one and the other, and it would have been better both for
England and the Provinces, had they more justly appreciated the character
of Catharine de' Medici and her son.

The first covert negotiations between Henry and the States had caused
much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France. Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
Paris, as representative of Philip. He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to