allies. She was determined never to separate their cause from her own.
Propositions tending to the security of herself and of her neighbours
would always be favourably received.

Parma, on his part, informed his master that there could be no doubt that
the Queen and the majority of her council abhorred the war, and that
already much had been gained by the fictitious negotiation. Lord-
Treasurer Burghley had been interposing endless delays and difficulties
in the way of every measure proposed for the relief of Lord Leicester,
and the assistance rendered him had been most lukewarm. Meantime the
Prince had been able, he said, to achieve much success in the field, and
the English had done nothing to prevent it. Since the return of Grafigni
and Bodman, however, it was obvious that the English government had
disowned these non-commissioned diplomatists. The whole negotiation and
all the negotiators were now discredited, but there was no doubt that
there had been a strong desire to treat, and great disappointment at the
result. Grafigni and Andrea de Loo had been publishing everywhere in
Antwerp that England would consider the peace as made, so soon as his
Majesty should be willing to accept any propositions.

His Majesty, meanwhile, sat in his cabinet, without the slightest
intention of making or accepting any propositions save those that were
impossible. He smiled benignantly at his nephew's dissimulation and at
the good results which it had already produced. He approved of gaining
time, he said, by fictitious negotiations and by the use of a mercantile
agent; for, no doubt, such a course would prevent the proper succours
from being sent to the Earl of Leicester. If the English would hand over
to him the cautionary towns held by them in Holland and Zeeland, promise
no longer to infest the seas, the Indies, and the Isles, with their
corsairs, and guarantee the complete obedience to their King and