The States, in their turn, drew the purse-strings. The two hundred thousand florins monthly were paid. The four hundred thousand florins which had been voted as an additional supply were for a time held back, as Leicester expressly stated, because of the discredit which had been thrown upon him from home.
[Strangely enough, Elizabeth was under the impression that the extra
grant of 400,000 florins (L40,000) for four months was four hundred
thousand pounds sterling. "The rest that was granted by the States,
as extraordinary to levy an army, which was 400,000 florins, not
pounds, as I hear your Majesty taketh it. It is forty thousand
pounds, and to be paid In March, April, May, and June last," &c.
Leicester to the Queen, 11 Oct. 1586. (S. P. Office MS.)]
The military operations were crippled for want of funds, but more fatal than everything else were the secret negotiations for peace. Subordinate individuals, like Grafigni and De Loo, went up and down, bringing presents out of England for Alexander Farnese, and bragging that Parma and themselves could have peace whenever they liked to make it, and affirming that Leicester's opinions were of no account whatever. Elizabeth's coldness to the Earl and to the Netherlands was affirmed to be the Prince of Parma's sheet-anchor; while meantime a house was ostentatiously prepared in Brussels by their direction for the reception of an English ambassador, who was every moment expected to arrive. Under such circumstances it was in, vain for the governor-general to protest that the accounts of secret negotiations were false, and quite natural that the States should lose their confidence in the Queen. An unfriendly and suspicious attitude towards her representative was a necessary result, and the demonstrations against the common enemy became still more languid. But for these underhand dealings, Grave, Venlo, and Neusz, might have been saved, and the current 'of the Meuse and Rhine have remained in the hands of the patriots.
The Earl was industrious, generous, and desirous of playing well his part. His personal courage was undoubted, and, in the opinion of his admirers—themselves, some of them, men of large military experience—his ability as a commander was of a high order. The valour displayed by the English nobles and gentlemen who accompanied him was magnificent, worthy the descendants of the victors at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; and the good behaviour of their followers—with a few rare exceptions—had been equally signal. But now the army was dwindling to a ghastly array of scarecrows, and the recruits, as they came from England, were appalled by the spectacle presented by their predecessors. "Our old ragged rogues here have so discouraged our new men," said Leicester; "as I protest to you they look like dead men." Out of eleven hundred freshly-arrived Englishmen, five hundred ran away in two days. Some were caught and hanged, and all seemed to prefer hanging to remaining in the service, while the Earl declared that he would be hanged as well rather than again undertake such a charge without being assured payment for his troops beforehand!
The valour of Sidney and Essex, Willoughby and Pelham, Roger Williams and Martin Schenk, was set at nought by such untoward circumstances. Had not Philip also left his army to starve and Alexander Farnese to work miracles, it would have fared still worse with Holland and England, and with the cause of civil and religious liberty in the year 1586.
The States having resumed, as much as possible; their former authority, were on very unsatisfactory terms with the governor-general. Before long, it was impossible for the twenty or thirty individuals called the States to be in the same town with the man whom, at the commencement of the year, they had greeted so warmly. The hatred between the Leicester faction and the municipalities became intense, for the foundation of the two great parties which were long to divide the Netherland commonwealth was already laid. The mercantile patrician interest, embodied in the states of Holland and Zeeland and inclined to a large toleration in the matter of religion, which afterwards took the form of Arminianism, was opposed by a strict Calvinist party, which desired to subject the political commonwealth to the reformed church; which nevertheless indulged in very democratic views of the social compact; and which was controlled by a few refugees from Flanders and Brabant, who had succeeded in obtaining the confidence of Leicester.
Thus the Earl was the nominal head of the Calvinist democratic party; while young Maurice of Nassau; stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, and guided by Barneveld, Buys, and other leading statesmen of these Provinces; was in an attitude precisely the reverse of the one which he was destined at a later and equally memorable epoch to assume. The chiefs of the faction which had now succeeded in gaining the confidence of Leicester were Reingault, Burgrave, and Deventer, all refugees.
The laws of Holland and of the other United States were very strict on the subject of citizenship, and no one but a native was competent to hold office in each Province. Doubtless, such regulations were narrow-spirited; but to fly in the face of them was the act of a despot, and this is what Leicester did. Reingault was a Fleming. He was a bankrupt merchant, who had been taken into the protection of Lamoral Egmont, and by that nobleman recommended to Granvelle for an office under the Cardinal's government. The refusal of this favour was one of the original causes of Egmont's hostility to Granvelle. Reingault subsequently entered the service of the Cardinal, however, and rewarded the kindness of his former benefactor by great exertions in finding, or inventing, evidence to justify the execution of that unfortunate nobleman. He was afterwards much employed by the Duke of Alva and by the Grand Commander Requesens; but after the pacification of Ghent he had been completely thrown out of service. He had recently, in a subordinate capacity, accompanied the legations of the States to France and to England, and had now contrived to ingratiate himself with the Earl of Leicester. He affected great zeal for the Calvinistic religion—an exhibition which, in the old servant of Granvelle and Alva, was far from edifying—and would employ no man or maid-servant in his household until their religious principles had been thoroughly examined by one or two clergymen. In brief, he was one of those, who, according to a homely Flemish proverb, are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope; but, with the exception of this brief interlude in his career, he lived and died a Papist.
Gerard Proninck, called Deventer, was a respectable inhabitant of Bois-le-Duc, who had left that city after it had again become subject to the authority of Spain. He was of decent life and conversation, but a restless and ambitious demagogue. As a Brabantine, he was unfit for office; and yet, through Leicester's influence and the intrigues of the democratic party, he obtained the appointment of burgomaster in the city of Utrecht. The States-General, however, always refused to allow him to appear at their sessions as representative of that city.
Daniel de Burgrave was a Flemish mechanic, who, by the exertion of much energy and talent, had risen to the poet of procureur-general of Flanders. After the conquest of the principal portion of that Province by Parma, he had made himself useful to the English governor-general in various ways, and particularly as a linguist. He spoke English—a tongue with which few Netherlanders of that day were familiar—and as the Earl knew no other, except (very imperfectly) Italian, he found his services in speaking and writing a variety of languages very convenient. He was the governor's private secretary, and, of course, had no entrance to the council of state, but he was accused of frequently thrusting himself into their hall of sessions, where, under pretence of arranging the Earl's table, or portfolio, or papers, he was much addicted to whispering into his master's ear, listening to conversation,—to eaves-dropping; in short, and general intrusiveness.