He united with the French king in negotiations for Netherland
independence, while denouncing the Provinces as guilty of criminal
rebellion against their lawful sovereign.

"He pretends," said Jeannin, "to assist in bringing about the peace, and
nevertheless does his best openly to prevent it."

Richardot declared that the firmness of the King of Spain proceeded
entirely from reliance on the promise of James that there should be no
acknowledgment in the treaty of the liberty of the States. Henry wrote to
Jeannin that he knew very well "what that was capable of, but that he
should not be kept awake by anything he could do."

As a king he spent his reign--so much of it as could be spared from
gourmandizing, drunkenness, dalliance with handsome minions of his own
sex, and theological pursuits--in rescuing the Crown from dependence on
Parliament; in straining to the utmost the royal prerogative; in
substituting proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his
power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold. As
father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the wondrous
delusion of the Spanish marriages.

The Gunpowder Plot seemed to have inspired him with an insane desire for
that alliance, and few things in history are more amazing than the
persistency with which he pursued the scheme, until the pursuit became
not only ridiculous, but impossible.

With such a man, frivolous, pedantic, conceited, and licentious, the
earnest statesmen of Holland were forced into close alliance. It is