Certainly, if the Provinces needed a king, which they had most
unequivocally declared to be the case, they might have wandered the
whole earth over, and, had it been possible, searched through the whole
range of history, before finding a monarch with a more kingly spirit
than the great Queen to whom they had at last had recourse.

Unfortunately, she was resolute in her refusal to accept the offered
sovereignty. The first interview terminated with this exchange of
addresses, and the deputies departed in their barges for their lodgings
in Pynchon-lane.

The next two days were past in perpetual conferences, generally at Lord
Burghley's house, between the envoys and the lords of the council, in
which the acceptance of the sovereignty was vehemently urged on the part
of the Netherlanders, and steadily declined in the name of her Majesty.

"Her Highness," said Burghley, "cannot be induced, by any writing or
harangue that you can make, to accept the principality or proprietorship
as sovereign, and it will therefore be labour lost for you to exhibit any
writing for the purpose of changing her intention. It will be better to
content yourselves with her Majesty's consent to assist you, and to take
you under her protection."

Nevertheless, two days afterwards, a writing was exhibited, drawn up by
Menin, in which another elaborate effort was made to alter the Queen's
determination. This anxiety, on the part of men already the principal
personages in a republic, to merge the independent existence of their
commonwealth in another and a foreign political organism, proved, at any
rate; that they were influenced by patriotic motives alone. It is also