Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/462

 442 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 61. they had realized only with 25 per cent, deducted to repay sixty thousand pounds which she had lent them and to find wages for Casimir's ten thousand Reiters, which had been thrown upon them in exchange for the promised English army. Accustomed as they were to her strange strokes of diplomatic art, Elizabeth's own ministers were unprepared for such a performance as this. Walsingham, ever free and frank, reported from Antwerp the language used upon the bourse there. ' It is said openly,' he wrote to Burghley, 'that if bonds which had passed under the great seal are not observed, no assurance whatever can be placed in her Majesty 's promises. For her honour and the honour of the realm, it had been better there had been given double value of them than this delay. We cannot excuse it. If she mean to desert the States hereafter, which will be a very dishonourable and dangerous course, she ought to say so, and inhibit her agents from dealing with them here- after.' 1 Burghley was equally explicit with the Queen. He told her that it was monstrous at such a time, and with the enemy in the field against them, to press the States to pay to her so large a part of what they had so hardly received. They would at once revolt to France, which would be worse to her than the loss of a hundred thousand pounds. 2 Leicester said that her honour was touched, the surety of the whole cause endangered, and 1 Walsingham to Burghley, July I 2 Burghley to Cobham and Wal- 18 : MSS. Holland. singhara, July 29 : MSS. Ibid.