In the course of the autumn, an attempt was made to play the same game at
Amsterdam. A plot was discovered, before it was fairly matured, to seize
the magistrates of that important city, to gain possession of the
arsenals, and to place the government in the hands of well-known
Leicestrians. A list of fourteen influential citizens, drawn up in the
writing of Burgrave, the Earl's confidential secretary, was found, all of
whom, it was asserted, had been doomed to the scaffold.

The plot to secure Amsterdam had failed, but, in North Holland, Medenblik
was held firmly for Leicester, by Diedrich Sonoy, in the very teeth of
the States. The important city of Enkhuyzen, too, was very near being
secured for the Earl, but a still more significant movement was made at
Leyden. That heroic city, ever since the famous siege of 1574, in which
the Spaniard had been so signally foiled, had distinguished itself by
great liberality of sentiment in religious matters. The burghers were
inspired by a love of country, and a hatred of oppression, both civil
and, ecclesiastical; and Papists and Protestants, who had fought side by
side against the common foe, were not disposed to tear each other to
pieces, now that he had been excluded from their gates. Meanwhile,
however, refugee Flemings and Brabantines had sought an asylum in the
city, and being, as usual, of the strictest sect of the Calvinists were
shocked at the latitudinarianism which prevailed. To the honour of the
city--as it seems to us now--but, to their horror, it was even found that
one or two Papists had seats in the magistracy. More than all this,
there was a school in the town kept by a Catholic, and Adrian van der
Werff himself--the renowned burgomaster, who had sustained the city
during the dreadful leaguer of 1574, and who had told the famishing
burghers that they might eat him if they liked, but that they should
never surrender to the Spaniards while he remained alive--even Adrian van
der Werff had sent his son to this very school? To the clamour made by