prepossessed with hatred for the person whom it is proposed to injure. Not contented with contending that she was of illegitimate birth, they affirmed that she was the offspring of an incestuous intercourse between Henry VIII. and his own daughter! They arraigned her of the vilest ingratitude towards Philip, to whose intercession, they asserted, she had been three times beholden for her life, when sentence of death had been passed against her for treason against her sister. They represented the punishment of convicted traitors, and the preventive measures against preparatory treason, which for self-preservation her government was compelled to pursue, in a religious persecution, against which the advocates and agents of the inquisition, - yea the very men who had kindled the fires in Smithfield, — filled Europe with their complaints. Books were set forth, wherein it was not contended, but dogmatically taught, that princes, when excommunicated for heresy, were to be deprived of kingdom and life. This doctrine re

ceived the sanction of the censorial authorities in Romish countries; and, by a libel which was secretly printed in England, the ladies of Elizabeth's household were exhorted to deal with her as Judith had dealt with Holofernes.* Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in England, was detected in a correspondence with those papists whose object it was, by foreign aid, to depose the queen and re-establish the Romish religion. He was ordered to depart the land, though he had rendered himself liable to the utmost severity of the law; and the queen was still so desirous of continuing at peace with Spain, that she sent the clerk of her council into that country, to inform the king of Spain for what just cause his minister had been sent away, and withal to assure him, lest, by having thus dismissed Mendoza, she might seem to renounce the ancient amity that had subsisted between both kingdoms," that all amicable offices should still be shown by her, if Philip would send any other minister who should be desirous of preserving *Camden, 307. 295.

66

TREATY WITH THE STATES.

307

friendship,-provided only that a like reception might be given to her ambassador. But this minister could not obtain a hearing.*

Meantime the prince of Orange, who had recovered after being desperately wounded by one assassin, perished by the hand of another; and the war in the Netherlands was vigorously prosecuted by the prince of Parma, a general whose martial genius had then never been equalled in modern warfare, and perhaps has never since been surpassed. Elizabeth, in her cautious policy, hesitated at entering into any direct alliance with the United States, till he had taken Antwerp, after one of the most memorable sieges in military history. She then hesitated no longer, lest the war should be brought home to her own doors; and concluded a treaty, whereby she contracted to aid the States with 5000 foot and 1000 horse during the war, the States engaging to repay the expense thus incurred, in the course of five years after the conclusion of a peace. Flushing, Ramma- A. D. kens, and the Briel were to be occupied by English 1585. troops as caution towns. The contracting parties were to enter into no league but on common consent; and ships for their mutual defence were to be equipped in equal numbers by both parties, at their common charge, and to be commanded by the admiral of England. The Zeelanders, in honour of this alliance, coined money with the arms of that province on one side, a lion rising out of the waves, and the motto Luctor et emergo; and on the other the arms of the several cities, with the motto, Authore Deo, favente Reginâ.† A declaration was published in the queen's name, "of the causes which had moved her to give aid to the defence of the people afflicted and oppressed in the Low Countries; for "although kings and princes sovereign, it was said, were not bound to render account of their actions to any but to God, their only sovereign Lord, we are, notwithstanding this our prerogative, at this time specially moved to publish, not only unto our own natural + Ibid. 324.

* Camden, 296.

loving subjects, but also to all others our neighbours, what our intention is at this time, and upon what just and reasonable grounds we are moved to give aid unto our next neighbours, the natural people of the Low Countries being, by long wars and persecutions of strange nations there, lamentably afflicted, and in present danger to be brought into a perpetual servitude.".

"First," said this declaration, "it is to be understood that there hath been, time out of mind, even by the natural situation of those Low Countries and our realm of England, one directly opposite to the other, and by reason of the ready crossing of the seas, and multitudes of large and commodious havens respectively on both sides, a continual traffic and commerce betwixt the people of England and the natural people of those countries, and so continued in all ancient times, when the several provinces thereof, as Flanders, Holland, and Zeeland, and other countries to them adjoining, were possessed by several lords, and not united together, as of late years they have been by intermarriages, and at length by concurrence of many and sundry titles, reduced to be under the government of those lords that succeeded to the dukedom of Burgundy whereby there had been many special confederations, not only betwixt the kings of England and the lords of the said countries, but also betwixt the very natural subjects of both, as the prelates, noblemen, citizens, burgesses, and other commonalties of the great cities and port towns of either country reciprocally, by special obligations and stipulations under their seals interchangeably, for maintenance of commerce and intercourse of merchants, and also of special mutual amity to be observed; and very express provision for mutual favours, affections, and all other friendly offices to be used and prosecuted by the people of the one nation towards the other. By which mutual bonds there hath continued perpetual union of the people's hearts together; and so, by way of continual intercourse, from age to age, the same mutual love hath been inviolably kept and exer

ELIZABETH'S DECLARATION.

309

men

cised, as it had been by the will of nature, and never utterly dissolved, nor yet for any long time discontinued, howsoever the kings and the lords of the countries sometimes (though very rarely) have been at difference, by sinister means of some other princes, their neighbours, envying the felicity of these two countries. And so had the same mutual and natural concourse and commerce been continued in many ages, far above the like example of any other countries in Christendom, to the honour and strength of the princes, and to the singular great benefit and enriching of their people, until of late years the king of Spain had been (as it is to be thought) counselled by his counsellors of Spain to appoint Spaniards, foreigners, and strangers of strange blood, more exercised in war than in peaceful government, and some of them notably delighted in blood, as had appeared by their actions,-to be the chiefest governors of all his said Low Countries, contrary to the ancient laws and customs thereof. The Spaniards, having no natural regard to the maintenance of those people in their ancient manner of peaceable living, but being exalted to absolute government by ambition, and for private lucre, have violently broken the ancient laws and liberties, and, in a tyrannous sort, have banished, killed, and destroyed, without order of law, many of the most ancient and principal persons of the natural nobility, that were most worthy of government. And howsoever, in the beginning of these cruel persecutions, the pretence thereof was for maintenance of Romish religion, yet they spared not to deprive very many catholics and ecclesiastical persons of their franchises and privileges; and of the chiefest that were executed of the nobility, none was in the whole country more affected to that religion than was the noble and valiant county of Egmond, the very glory of that country, who neither for his singular victories in the service of the king of Spain can be forgotten in true histories, nor yet for the cruelty used for his destruction, be but for ever lamented in the hearts of the people of that country."

The declaration proceeded to show how the horrible calamities thus brought upon the Low Countries had moved to compassion even such of their neighbours as had been at frequent discord with them in former times, insomuch that the French king thought, very many years ago, to have taken them under his protection, had not (as the deputies of the States were answered) the "complots of the house of Guise, stirred and maintained by money out of Spain, disturbed the peace of France, and thereby urged the king to forbear from the resolution he had made, not to aid those oppressed people of the Low Countries against the Spaniards, but also to have accepted them as his own subjects. But, in very truth, however they were comforted and kept in hope by the French king, who had oftentimes solicited us, as queen of England, both by message and writing, to be careful of their defence; yet, in respect that they were more strictly knit in ancient friendship to this realm than to any other country, we are sure that they could be pitied of none with more cause of grief generally than of our subjects, being their most ancient allies and familiar neighbours; and that in such manner, that this our realm of England and those countries have been of long time resembled and termed as man and wife. For these urgent causes, and many others, we have by many friendly messages and ambassadors, by many letters and writings, to the said king of Spain, our brother and ally, declared our compassion of this so evil and cruel usage of his natural and loyal people. And furthermore, as a good loving sister to him, and a natural good neighbour to his Low Countries, we have often, and often again, most friendly warned him, that if he did not, by his wisdom and princely clemency, restrain the tyranny of his governors, and cruelty of his men of war, we feared that the people should be forced, for safety of their lives, and for continuance of their native country in the former state of their liberties, to seek the protection of some other foreign lord, or rather to yield themselves wholly to the sovereignty of some mighty