History of the United Netherlands, 1586



CHAPTER X.

Should Elizabeth accept the Sovereignty?--The Effects of her Anger--
Quarrels between the Earl and the Staten--The Earl's three
Counsellors--Leicester's Finance--Chamber--Discontent of the
Mercantile Classes--Paul Buys and the Opposition--Been Insight of
Paul Buys--Truchsess becomes a Spy upon him--Intrigues of Buys with
Denmark--His Imprisonment--The Earl's Unpopularity--His Quarrels
with the States--And with the Norrises--His Counsellors Wilkes and
Clerke--Letter from the Queen to Leicester--A Supper Party at
Hohenlo's--A drunken Quarrel--Hohenlo's Assault upon Edward Norris--
Ill Effects of the Riot.

The brief period of sunshine had been swiftly followed by storms. The
Governor Absolute had, from the outset, been placed in a false position.
Before he came to the Netherlands the Queen had refused the sovereignty.
Perhaps it was wise in her to decline so magnificent an offer; yet
certainly her acceptance would have been perfectly honourable. The
constituted authorities of the Provinces formally made the proposition.
There is no doubt whatever that the whole population ardently desired to
become her subjects. So far as the Netherlands were concerned, then, she
would have been fully justified in extending her sceptre over a free
people, who, under no compulsion and without any, diplomatic chicane, had
selected her for their hereditary chief. So far as regarded England, the
annexation to that country of a continental cluster of states, inhabited
by a race closely allied to it by blood, religion, and the instinct for