long, the most terrible battles, both by land and sea, which the age had
yet witnessed, were to occur, are quite as full of instruction and moral
as the most sanguinary combats ever waged.

At last the commissioners exchanged copies of their respective powers.
After four months of waiting and wrangling, so much had been achieved--
a show of commissions and a selection of the place for conference. And
now began the long debate about the cessation of arms. The English
claimed an armistice for the whole dominion of Philip and Elizabeth
respectively, during the term of negotiation, and for twenty days after.
The Spanish would grant only a temporary truce, terminable at six days'
notice, and that only for the four cautionary towns of Holland held by
the Queen. Thus Philip would be free to invade England at his leisure
out of the obedient Netherlands or Spain. This was inadmissible, of
course, but a week was spent at the outset in reducing the terms to
writing; and when the Duke's propositions were at last produced in the
French tongue, they were refused by the Queen's commissioners, who
required that the documents should be in Latin. Great was the triumph of
Dr. Dale, when, after another interval, he found their Latin full of
barbarisms and blunders, at which a school-boy would have blushed. The
King's commissioners, however, while halting in their syntax, had kept
steadily to their point.

"You promised a general cessation of aims at our coming," said Dale, at a
conference on the 2/12 June, "and now ye have lingered five times twenty
days, and nothing done at all. The world may see the delays come of you
and not of us, and that ye are not so desirous of peace as ye pretend."

"But as far your invasion of England," stoutly observed the Earl of
Derby, "ye shall find it hot coming thither. England was never so ready