London. Olden-Barneveld and the admiral had been sent forth by the
Staten in what in those days was considered great haste to prevent a
conclusion of a treaty between their two allies and the common enemy.
They had been too late in France, and now, on arriving in England, they
found that government steadily drifting towards what seemed the hopeless
shipwreck of a general peace.

What must have been the grief of Olden-Barneveld when he heard from the
lips of the enlightened Buckhurst that the treaty of 1585 had been
arranged to expire--according to the original limitation--with a peace,
and that as the States could now make peace and did not choose to do so,
her Majesty must be considered as relieved from her contract of alliance,
and as justified in demanding repayment of her advances!

To this perfidious suggestion what could the States' envoy reply but that
as a peace such as the treaty of 1585 presupposed--to wit, with security
for the Protestant religion and for the laws and liberties of the
provinces--was impossible, should the States now treat with the king or
the cardinal?

The envoys had but one more interview with, the queen, in which she was
more benignant in manner but quite as peremptory in her demands. Let the
States either thoroughly satisfy her as to past claims and present
necessities, or let them be prepared for her immediate negotiation with
the enemy. Should she decide to treat, she would not be unmindful of
their interests, she said, nor deliver them over into the enemy's hands.
She repeated, however, the absurd opinion that there were means enough of
making Philip nominal sovereign of all the Netherlands, without allowing
him to exercise any authority over them. As if the most Catholic and
most absolute monarch that ever breathed could be tied down by the