and to take for such outlay a most ample security in the shape of
cautionary towns.

Too intelligent a politician not to feel the absolute necessity of at
last coming into the field to help the Netherlanders to fight her own
battle, she was still willing, for a season longer, to wear the mask of
coyness and coquetry, which she thought most adapted to irritate the
Netherlanders into a full compliance with her wishes. Her advisers in
the Provinces were inclined to take the same view. It seemed obvious,
after the failure in France, that those countries must now become either
English or Spanish; yet Elizabeth, knowing the risk of their falling
back, from desperation, into the arms of her rival, allowed them to
remain for a season on the edge of destruction--which would probably have
been her ruin also--in the hope of bringing them to her feet on her own
terms. There was something of feminine art in this policy, and it was
not without the success which often attends such insincere manoeuvres.
At the same time, as the statesmen of the republic knew that it was the
Queen's affair, when so near a neighbour's roof was blazing, they
entertained little doubt of ultimately obtaining her alliance. It was
pity--in so grave an emergency--that a little frankness could not have
been substituted for a good deal of superfluous diplomacy.

Gilpin, a highly intelligent agent of the English government in Zeeland,
kept Sir Francis Walsingham thoroughly informed of the sentiments
entertained by the people of that province towards England. Mixing
habitually with the most influential politicians, he was able to render
material assistance to the English council in the diplomatic game which
had been commenced, and on which a no less important stake than the crown
of England was to be hazarded.