January by the New Style--the deputies of all the States at an early hour
came to his lodgings, with much pomp, preceded by a herald and
trumpeters. Leicester, not expecting them quite so soon, was in his
dressing-room, getting ready for the solemn audience, when, somewhat to
his dismay, a flourish of trumpets announced the arrival of the whole
body in his principal hall of audience. Hastening his preparations as
much as possible, he descended to that apartment, and was instantly
saluted by a flourish of rhetoric still more formidable; for that "very
great, and wise old Leoninus," forthwith began an oration, which promised
to be of portentous length and serious meaning. The Earl was slightly
flustered, when, fortunately; some one whispered in his ear that they had
come to offer him the much-coveted prize of the stadholderate-general.
Thereupon he made bold to interrupt the flow of the chancellor's
eloquence in its first outpourings. "As this is a very private matter,"
said he, "it will be better to treat of it in a more private place I pray
you therefore to come into my chamber, where these things may be more
conveniently discussed."
"You hear what my Lord says," cried Leoninus, turning to his companions;
"we are to withdraw into his chamber."
Accordingly they withdrew, accompanied by the Earl, and by five or six
select counsellors, among whom were Davison and Dr. Clerk. Then the
chancellor once more commenced his harangue, and went handsomely through
the usual forms of compliment, first to the Queen, and then to her
representative, concluding with an earnest request that the Earl--
although her Majesty had declined the sovereignty "would take the name
and place of absolute governor and general of all their forces and
soldiers, with the disposition of their whole revenues and taxes."
So soon as the oration was concluded, Leicester; who did not speak
French, directed Davison to reply in that language.
The envoy accordingly, in name of the Earl, expressed the deepest
gratitude for this mark of the affection and confidence of the States-
General towards the Queen. He assured them that the step thus taken by
them would be the cause of still more favour and affection on the part of
her Majesty, who would unquestionably, from day to day, augment the
succour that she was extending to the Provinces in order to relieve men
from their misery. For himself, the Earl protested that he could never
sufficiently recompense the States for the honour which had thus been
conferred upon him, even if he should live one hundred lives. Although
he felt himself quite unable to sustain the weight of so great an office,
yet he declared that they might repose with full confidence on his
integrity and good intentions. Nevertheless, as the authority thus
offered to him was very arduous, and as the subject required deep
deliberation, he requested that the proposition should be reduced to
writing, and delivered into his hands. He might then come to a
conclusion thereupon, most conducive to the glory of God and the welfare
of the land.
Three days afterwards, 14th January, the offer, drawn up formally in
writing, was presented to envoy Davison, according to the request of
Leicester. Three days latter, 17th January, his Excellency having
deliberated upon the proposition, requested a committee of conference.
The conference took place the same day, and there was some discussion
upon matters of detail, principally relating to the matter of
contributions. The Earl, according to the report of the committee,
manifested no repugnance to the acceptance of the office, provided these
points could be satisfactorily adjusted. He seemed, on the contrary,
impatient, rather than reluctant; for, on the day following the
conference, he sent his secretary Gilpin with a somewhat importunate
message. "His Excellency was surprised," said the secretary, "that the
States were so long in coming to a resolution on the matters suggested by
him in relation to the offer of the government-general; nor could his
Excellency imagine the cause of the delay."
For, in truth, the delay was caused by an excessive, rather than a
deficient, appetite for power on the part of his Excellency. The States,
while conferring what they called the "absolute" government, by which it
afterwards appeared that they meant absolute, in regard to time, not to
function--were very properly desirous of retaining a wholesome control
over that government by means of the state-council. They wished not only
to establish such a council, as a check upon the authority of the new
governor, but to share with him at least in the appointment of the
members who were to compose the board. But the aristocratic Earl was
already restive under the thought of any restraint--most of all the
restraint of individuals belonging to what he considered the humbler
classes.
"Cousin, my lord ambassador," said he to Davison, "among your sober
companions be it always remembered, I beseech you, that your cousin have
no other alliance but with gentle blood. By no means consent that he be
linked in faster bonds than their absolute grant may yield him a free and
honourable government, to be able to do such service as shall be meet for
an honest man to perform in such a calling, which of itself is very
noble. But yet it is not more to be embraced, if I were to be led in
alliance by such keepers as will sooner draw my nose from the right scent
of the chace, than to lead my feet in the true pace to pursue the game I
desire to reach. Consider, I pray you, therefore, what is to be done,
and how unfit it will be in respect of my poor self, and how unacceptable
to her Majesty, and how advantageous to enemies that will seek holes in
my coat, if I should take so great a name upon me, and so little power.
They challenge acceptation already, and I challenge their absolute grant
and offer to me, before they spoke of any instructions; for so it was
when Leoninus first spoke to me with them all on New Years Day, as you
heard--offering in his speech all manner of absolute authority. If it
please them to confirm this, without restraining instructions, I will
willingly serve the States, or else, with such advising instructions as
the Dowager of Hungary had."
This was explicit enough, and Davison, who always acted for Leicester in
the negotiations with the States, could certainly have no doubt as to the
desires of the Earl, on the subject of "absolute" authority. He did
accordingly what he could to bring the States to his Excellency's way of
thinking; nor was he unsuccessful.
On the 22nd January, a committee of conference was sent by the States to
Leyden, in which city Leicester was making a brief visit. They were
instructed to procure his consent, if possible, to the appointment, by
the States themselves, of a council consisting of members from each
Province. If they could not obtain this concession, they were directed
to insist as earnestly as possible upon their right to present a double.
list of candidates, from which he was to make nominations. And if the
one and the other proposition should be refused, the States were then to
agree that his Excellency should freely choose and appoint a council of
state, consisting of native residents from every Province, for the period
of one year. The committee was further authorised to arrange the
commission for the governor, in accordance with these points; and to draw
up a set of instructions for. the state-council, to the satisfaction of
his Excellency. The committee was also empowered to conclude the matter
at once, without further reference to the States.
Certainly a committee thus instructed was likely to be sufficiently
pliant. It had need to be, in order to bend to the humour of his
Excellency, which was already becoming imperious. The adulation which he
had received; the triumphal marches, the Latin orations, the flowers
strewn in his path, had produced their effect, and the Earl was almost
inclined to assume the airs of royalty. The committee waited upon him at
Leyden. He affected a reluctance to accept the "absolute" government,
but his coyness could not deceive such experienced statesmen as the "wise
old Leoliinus," or Menin, Maalzoon, Florin Thin, or Aitzma, who composed
the deputation. It was obvious enough to them that it was not a King Log
that had descended among them, but it was not a moment for complaining.
The governor elect insisted, of course, that the two Englishmen,
according to the treaty with her Majesty, should be members of, the
council. He also, at once, nominated Leoninus, Meetkerk, Brederode,
Falck, and Paul Buys, to the same office; thinking, no doubt, that these
were five keepers--if keepers he must have--who would not draw his nose
off the scent, nor prevent his reaching the game he hunted, whatever that
game might be. It was reserved for the future, however, to show,
whether, the five were like to hunt in company with him as harmoniously
as he hoped. As to the other counsellors, he expressed a willingness
that candidates should be proposed for him, as to whose qualifications he
would make up his mind at leisure.
This matter being satisfactorily adjusted-and certainly unless the game
pursued by the Earl was a crown royal, he ought to have been satisfied
with his success--the States received a letter from their committee at
Leyden, informing them that his Excellency, after some previous
protestations, had accepted the government (24th January, 1586).
It was agreed that he should be inaugurated Governor-General of the
United Provinces of Gelderland and Zutphen, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland,
Utrecht, Friesland, and all others in confederacy with them. He was to
have supreme military command by land and sea. He was to exercise
supreme authority in matters civil and political, according to the
customs prevalent in the reign of the Emperor Charles V. All officers,
political, civil, legal, were to be appointed by him out of a double or
triple nomination made by the States of the Provinces in which vacancies
might occur. The States-General were to assemble whenever and wherever
he should summon them. They were also--as were the States of each
separate Province--competent to meet together by their own appointment.
The Governor-General was to receive an oath of fidelity from the States,
and himself to swear the maintenance of the ancient laws, customs, and
privileges of the country.
The deed was done. In vain had an emissary of the French court been
exerting his utmost to prevent the consummation of this close alliance.
For the wretched government of Henry III., while abasing itself before
Philip II., and offering the fair cities and fertile plains of France as
a sacrifice to that insatiable ambition which wore the mask of religious
bigotry, was most anxious that Holland and England should not escape the
meshes by which it was itself enveloped. The agent at the Hague came
nominally upon some mercantile affairs, but in reality, according to
Leicester, "to impeach the States from binding themselves to her
Majesty." But he was informed that there was then no leisure for his
affairs; "for the States would attend to the service of the Queen of
England, before all princes in the world." The agent did not feel
complimented by the coolness of this reception; yet it was reasonable
enough, certainly, that the Hollanders should remember with bitterness
the contumely, which they had experienced the previous year in France.
The emissary was; however, much disgusted. "The fellow," said Leicester,
"took it in such snuff, that he came proudly to the States and offered
his letters, saying; 'Now I trust you have done all your sacrifices to
the Queen of England, and may yield me some leisure to read my masters
letters.'"--"But they so shook him, up," continued the Earl, "for naming
her Majesty in scorn--as they took it--that they hurled him his letters;
and bid him content himself;" and so on, much to the agent's
discomfiture, who retired in greater "snuff" than ever.
So much for the French influence. And now Leicester had done exactly
what the most imperious woman in the world, whose favour was the breath
of his life, had expressly forbidden him to do. The step having been
taken, the prize so tempting to his ambition having been snatched, and
the policy which had governed the united action of the States and himself
seeming so sound, what ought he to have done in order to avert the
tempest which he must have foreseen? Surely a man who knew so much of
woman's nature and of Elizabeth's nature as he did, ought to have
attempted to conciliate her affections, after having so deeply wounded
her pride. He knew his power. Besides the graces of his person and
manner--which few women, once impressed by them, could ever forget--he
possessed the most insidious and flattering eloquence, and, in absence,
his pen was as wily as his tongue. For the Earl was imbued with the very
genius of courtship. None was better skilled than he in the phrases of
rapturous devotion, which were music to the ear both of the woman and the
Queen; and he knew his royal mistress too well not to be aware that the
language of passionate idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen
unheeded upon her soul. It was strange therefore, that in this
emergency, he should not at once throw himself upon her compassion
without any mediator. Yet, on the contrary, he committed the monstrous
error of entrusting his defence to envoy Davison, whom he determined to
despatch at once with instructions to the Queen, and towards whom he
committed the grave offence of concealing from him her previous
prohibitions. But how could the Earl fail to perceive that it was the
woman, not the Queen, whom be should have implored for pardon; that it
was Robert Dudley, not William Davison, who ought to have sued upon his
knees. This whole matter of the Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester
stadholderate, forms a strange psychological study, which deserves and
requires some minuteness of attention; for it was by the characteristics
of these eminent personages that tho current history was deeply stamped.
Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter
conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should
have been a letter from Leicester. On the contrary, it proved to be a
dull formal epistle from the States.
And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered
necessary. On the 3rd February the ambassador--having announced his
intention of going to England, by command of his Excellency, so soon as
the Earl should have been inaugurated, for the purpose of explaining all
these important transactions to her Majesty--waited upon the States with
the request that they should prepare as speedily as might be their letter
to the Queen, with other necessary documents, to be entrusted to his
care. He also suggested that the draft or minute of their proposed
epistle should be submitted to him for advice--"because the humours of
her Majesty were best known to him."
Now the humours of her Majesty were best known to Leicester of all men
in the whole world, and it is inconceivable that he should have allowed
so many days and weeks to pass without taking these humours properly into
account. But the Earl's head was slightly turned by his sudden and
unexpected success. The game that he had been pursuing had fallen into
his grasp, almost at the very start, and it is not astonishing that he
should have been somewhat absorbed in the enjoyment of his victory.
Three days later (6th February) the minute of a letter to Elizabeth,
drawn up by Menin, was submitted to the ambassador; eight days after that
(14th February) Mr. Davison took leave of the States, and set forth for
the Brill on his way to England; and three or four days later yet, he was
still in that sea-port, waiting for a favourable wind. Thus from the
11th January, N.S., upon which day the first offer of the absolute
government had been made to Leicester, nearly forty days had elapsed,
during which long period the disobedient Earl had not sent one line,
private or official, to her Majesty on this most important subject. And
when at last the Queen was to receive information of her favourite's
delinquency, it was not to be in his well-known handwriting and
accompanied by his penitent tears and written caresses, but to be laid
before her with all the formality of parchment and sealingwax, in the
stilted diplomatic jargon of those "highly-mighty, very learned, wise,
and very foreseeing gentlemen, my lords the States-General." Nothing
could have been managed with less adroitness.
Meantime, not heeding the storm gathering beyond the narrow seas, the new
governor was enjoying the full sunshine of power. On the 4th February
the ceremony of his inauguration took place, with great pomp and ceremony
at the Hague.
The beautiful, placid, village-capital of Holland wore much the same
aspect at that day as now. Clean, quiet, spacious streets, shaded with
rows of whispering poplars and umbrageous limes, broad sleepy canals--
those liquid highways alone; which glided in phantom silence the bustle,
and traffic, and countless cares of a stirring population--quaint
toppling houses, with tower and gable; ancient brick churches, with
slender spire and musical chimes; thatched cottages on the outskirts,
with stork-nests on the roofs--the whole without fortification save the
watery defences which enclosed it with long-drawn lines on every side;
such was the Count's park, or 's Graven Haage, in English called the
Hague.
It was embowered and almost buried out of sight by vast groves of oaks
and beeches. Ancient Badahuennan forests of sanguinary Druids, the "wild
wood without mercy" of Saxon savages, where, at a later period, sovereign
Dirks and Florences, in long succession of centuries, had ridden abroad
with lance in rest, or hawk on fist; or under whose boughs, in still
nearer days, the gentle Jacqueline had pondered and wept over her
sorrows, stretched out in every direction between the city and the
neighbouring sea. In the heart of the place stood the ancient palace of
the counts, built in the thirteenth century by William II. of Holland,
King of the Romans, with massive brick walls, cylindrical turrets,
pointed gable and rose-shaped windows, and with spacious coup-yard,
enclosed by feudal moat, drawbridge, and portcullis.
In the great banqueting-hall of the ancient palace, whose cedarn-roof of
magnificent timber-work, brought by crusading counts from the Holy Land,
had rung with the echoes of many a gigantic revel in the days of
chivalry--an apartment one hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
high--there had been arranged an elevated platform, with a splendid chair
of state for the "absolute" governor, and with a great profusion of
gilding and velvet tapestry, hangings, gilt emblems, complimentary
devices, lions, unicorns, and other imposing appurtenances. Prince
Maurice, and all the members of his house, the States-General in full
costume, and all the great functionaries, civil and military, were
assembled. There was an elaborate harangue by orator Menin, in which it
was proved; by copious citations from Holy Writ and from ancient
chronicle, that the Lord never forsakes His own; so that now, when the
Provinces were at their last gasp by the death of Orange and the loss of
Antwerp, the Queen of England and the Earl of Leicester had suddenly
descended, as if from Heaven; to their rescue. Then the oaths of mutual
fidelity were exchanged between the governor and the States, and, in
conclusion, Dr. Bartholomew Clerk ventured to measure himself with the
"big fellows," by pronouncing an oration which seemed to command
universal approbation. And thus the Earl was duly installed Governor-
General of the United States of the Netherlands.
But already the first mutterings of the storm were audible. A bird in
the air had whispered to the Queen that her favourite was inclined to
disobedience. "Some flying tale hath been told me here," wrote Leicester
to Walsingham, "that her Majesty should mislike my name of Excellency.
But if I had delighted, or would have received titles, I refused a title
higher than Excellency, as Mr. Davison, if you ask him, will tell you;
and that I, my own self, refused most earnestly that, and, if I might
have done it, this also." Certainly, if the Queen objected to this
common form of address, which had always been bestowed upon Leicester, as
he himself observed, ever since she had made him an earl, it might be
supposed that her wrath would mount high when she should hear of him as
absolute governor-general. It is also difficult to say what higher title
he had refused, for certainly the records show that he had refused
nothing, in the way of power and dignity, that it was possible for him to
obtain.
But very soon afterwards arrived authentic intelligence that the Queen
had been informed of the proposition made on New Year's-Day (0.S.), and
that, although she could not imagine the possibility of his accepting,
she was indignant that he had not peremptorily rejected the offer.
"As to the proposal made to you," wrote Burghley, "by the mouth of
Leoninus, her Majesty hath been informed that you had thanked them in her
name, and alledged that there was no such thing in the contract, and that
therefore you could not accept nor knew how to answer the same."
Now this information was obviously far from correct, although it had been
furnished by the Earl himself to Burghley. We have seen that Leicester
had by no means rejected, but very gratefully entertained, the
proposition as soon as made. Nevertheless the Queen was dissatisfied,
even without suspecting that she had been directly disobeyed. "Her
Majesty," continued the Lord-Treasurer; "is much offended with this
proceeding. She allows not that you should give them thanks, but findeth
it very strange that you did not plainly declare to them that they did
well know how often her Majesty had refused to have any one for her take
any such government there, and that she had always so answered
peremptorily. Therefore there might be some suspicion conceived that by
offering on their part, and refusal on hers, some further mischief might
be secretly hidden by some odd person's device to the hurt of the cause.
But in that your Lordship did not flatly say to them that yourself did
know her Majesty's mind therein, that she never meant, in this sort, to
take the absolute government, she is offended considering, as she saith,
that none knew her determination therein better than yourself. For at
your going hence, she did peremptorily charge you not to accept any such
title and office; and therefore her straight commandment now is that you
shall not accept the same, for she will never assent thereto, nor avow
you with any such title."
If Elizabeth was so wrathful, even while supposing that the offer had
been gratefully declined, what were likely to be her emotions when she
should be informed that it had been gratefully accepted. The Earl
already began to tremble at the probable consequences of his mal-
adroitness. Grave was the error he had committed in getting himself made
governor-general against orders; graver still, perhaps fatal, the blunder
of not being swift to confess his fault, and cry for pardon, before other
tongues should have time to aggravate his offence. Yet even now he
shrank from addressing the Queen in person, but hoped to conjure the
rising storm by means of the magic wand of the Lord-Treasurer. He
implored his friend's interposition to shield him in the emergency, and
begged that at least her Majesty and the lords of council would suspend
their judgment until Mr. Davison should deliver those messages and
explanations with which, fully freighted, he was about to set sail from
the Brill.