And with this exordium the great Advocate plunged at once into the depths
of his subject, so far as was possible in an address of ceremony. He
besought the king not to permit Spain, standing on the neck of the
provinces, to grasp from that elevation at other empires. He reminded
James of his duty to save those of his own religion from the clutch of a
sanguinary superstition, to drive away those lurking satellites of the
Roman pontiff who considered Britain their lawful prey. He implored him
to complete the work so worthily begun by Elizabeth. If all those bound
by one interest should now, he urged, unite their efforts, the Spaniard,
deprived not only of the Netherlands, but, if he were not wise in time,
banished from the ocean and stripped of all his transmarine possessions,
would be obliged to consent to a peace founded on the only secure basis,
equality of strength. The envoy concluded by beseeching the king for
assistance to Ostend, now besieged for two years long.

But James manifested small disposition to melt in the fervour of the
Advocate's eloquence. He answered with a few cold commonplaces.
Benignant but extremely cautious, he professed goodwill enough to the
States but quite as much for Spain, a power with which, he observed, he
had never quarrelled, and from which he had received the most friendly
offices. The archdukes, too, he asserted, had never been hostile to the
realm, but only to the Queen of England. In brief, he was new to English
affairs, required time to look about him, but would not disguise that his
genius was literary, studious, and tranquil, and much more inclined to
peace than to war.

In truth, James had cause to look very sharply about him. It required an
acute brain and steady nerves to understand and to control the whirl of
parties and the conflict of interests and intrigues, the chameleon
shiftings of character and colour, at this memorable epoch of transition