cavalry, converted into highwaymen by want of pay, had been plundering
the peasantry, and we have seen that Thomas Wilkes had "pawned his
carcase" to provide for their temporary relief.

With regard to the insinuation that prominent personages in the country
had been tampered with by the enemy, the envoys were equally astonished
by such an attack. The great Deventer treason had not yet been heard of
in England for it had occurred only a week before this first interview--
but something of the kind was already feared; for the slippery dealings
of York and Stanley with Tassis and Parma, had long been causing painful
anxiety, and had formed the subject of repeated remonstrances on the part
of the 'States' to Leicester and to the Queen. The deputies were hardly,
prepared therefore to defend their own people against dealing privately
with the King of Spain. The only man suspected of such practices was
Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault, whom the Earl
had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances of the States,
who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now in prison, and
threatened with capital punishment.

To suppose that Buys or Barneveld, Roorda, Meetkerk, or any other leading
statesman in the Netherlands, was contemplating a private arrangement
with Philip II., was as ludicrous a conception as to imagine Walsingham
a pensioner of the Pope, or Cecil in league with the Duke of Guise. The
end and aim of the States' party was war. In war they not only saw the
safety of the reformed religion, but the only means of maintaining the
commercial prosperity of the commonwealth. The whole correspondence of
the times shows that no politician in the country dreamed of peace,
either by public or secret negotiation. On the other hand--as will be
made still clearer than ever--the Queen was longing for peace, and was
treating for peace at that moment through private agents, quite without