Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/266

236 of such undoubted military genius as Sir William Stanley should have fallen so low as to become a mere pensioner of Spain, and the enemy of his fatherland, is sad in the extreme. Devotion to his religion utterly blinded him, and prevented him from discerning how fatal and how foolish was the course he was pursuing. Had he held instead of surrendering Deventer, he would undoubtedly have obtained high honours in England; and it is said that, at the very moment when he was plotting to surrender this city to Spain, Elizabeth had just consented to his being appointed the next Viceroy of Ireland.