be developed out of the same matrix; while, despite the hardy and
adventurous spirit which characterised the English nation throughout all
its grades, there was never a more intensely aristocratic influence in
the world than the governing and directing spirit of the England of that
age.

It was impossible that the courtiers of Elizabeth and the burgher-
statesmen of Holland and Friesland should sympathize with each other in
sentiment or in manner. The republicans in their exuberant consciousness
of having at last got rid of kings and kingly paraphernalia in their own,
land--for since the rejection of the sovereignty offered to France and
England in 1585 this feeling had become so predominant as to make it
difficult to believe that those offers had been in reality so recent--
were insensibly adopting a frankness, perhaps a roughness, of political
and social demeanour which was far from palatable to the euphuistic
formalists of other, countries.

Especially the English statesmen, trained to approach their sovereign
with almost Oriental humility, and accustomed to exact for themselves
a large amount of deference, could ill brook the free and easy tone
occasionally adopted in diplomatic and official intercourse by these
upstart republicans.

[The Venetian ambassador Contarin relates that in the reign of James
I. the great nobles of England were served at table by lackeys on
they knees.]

A queen, who to loose morals, imperious disposition, and violent temper
united as inordinate a personal vanity as was ever vouchsafed to woman,
and who up to the verge of decrepitude was addressed by her courtiers in