Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/565

 1584-5.] THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION. 549 ing charge of the States herself afraid of seeing them conquered, afraid of seeing them incorporated with France, afraid of going to war by the side of France. In December she half resolved upon the last. She bade Sir Edward Stafford tell Henry that she would consent. But Henry found that her agents had been at work in the Netherlands dissuading the French connection. Warned by past experience he was obliged to be wary in his dealings with her. He told Stafford he feared the invitation might be a stratagem to sharpen his ap- petite, and thut when he and Philip were ' by the ears,' she would, as her accustomed manner was, ' let them alone and sit still.' * She complained that she was un- fairly suspected ; yet Henry had probably divined cor- rectly, if not her conscious intention, yet the course which she would in reality pursue. He could not go to war single-handed for England's convenience, with no prospect of advantage to himself; and the States reasonably claimed liberty of action, and the right, if she would not herself help them, to become French if they pleased. To this issue things were so clearly tending, that in January she sent Secretary Da vi son into Holland 'to devise how the French might be stayed from acquiring absolute dominion there.' If the States answered that the French would not help them except on this con- dition, she empowered Davison to say that sooner than they should be annexed by France, or conquered by Stafford to Walsingham, October & 18: MSS. France.