sophistries of the League and of the League's secret friend, James
Stuart.

The King of Spain had more than 100,000 men under arms, and was enlisting
more soldiers everywhere and every day, had just deposited 4,000,000
crowns with his Antwerp bankers for a secret purpose, and all the time
was exuberant in his assurances of peace. One would have thought that
there had never been negotiations in Bourbourg, that the Spanish Armada
had never sailed from Coruna.

"You are wise and prudent in France," said the Advocate, "but we are used
to Spanish proceedings, and from much disaster sustained are filled with
distrust. The King of England seems now to wish that the Archduke should
draw up a document according to his good pleasure, and that the States
should make an explanatory deed, which the King should sign also and ask
the King of France to do the same. But this is very hazardous.

"We do not mean to receive laws from the King of Spain, nor the Archduke
. . . . The Spanish proceedings do not indicate peace but war.
One must not take it ill of us that we think these matters of grave
importance to our friends and ourselves. Affairs have changed very much
in the last four months. The murder of the first vizier of the Turkish
emperor and his designs against Persia leave the Spanish king and the
Emperor free from attack in that quarter, and their armaments are far
greater than last year . . . . I cannot understand why the treaty of
Xanten, formerly so highly applauded, should now be so much disapproved.
. . . The King of Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast
design to give the law to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king
according to their will, to reduce the Evangelical electors, princes,
and estates of Germany to obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having