that informal transactions were pending, but had authorised the Secretary
to assure the United States that no treaty would be made without their
knowledge and full concurrence. "She doth think," wrote Walsingham to
Leicester," that you should, if you shall see no cause to the contrary,
acquaint the council of state there that certain overtures of peace are
daily made unto her, but that she meaneth not to proceed therein without
their good liking and privity, being persuaded that there can no peace be
made profitable or sure for her that shall not also stand with their
safety; and she doth acknowledge hers to be so linked with theirs as
nothing can fall out to their prejudice, but she must be partaker of
their harm."

This communication was dated on the 21st April, exactly three weeks after
the Queen's letter to Heneage, in which she had spoken of the "malicious
bruits" concerning the pretended peace-negotiations; and the Secretary
was now confirming, by her order, what she had then stated under her own
hand, that she would "do nothing that might concern them without their
own knowledge and good liking."

And surely nothing could be more reasonable. Even if the strict letter
of the August treaty between the Queen and the States did not provide
against any separate negotiations by the one party without the knowledge
of the other, there could be no doubt at all that its spirit absolutely
forbade the clandestine conclusion of a peace with Spain by England
alone, or by the Netherlands alone, and that such an arrangement would be
disingenuous, if not positively dishonourable.

Nevertheless it would almost seem that Elizabeth had been taking
advantage of the day when she was writing her letter to Heneage on the
1st of April. Never was painstaking envoy more elaborately trifled with.