United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One hope, the greatest of all, had been defeated directly. Still, it was just possible that Griffith might be away on temporary business. In this faint hope Sir George strolled about till his supper was ready for him. When he had eaten his supper, he rang the bell, and, taking advantage of a common custom, insisted on the landlord, Thomas Leicester, taking a glass with him.
At that moment there came a knocking at the door, then it was thrown open, and there stepped inside the Earl of Leicester, preceded by a page bearing a torch. "Is Michel de la Foret within?" he called; then stopped short, as though astonished, seeing Angele. "So! so!" he said, with a contemptuous laugh. Michel de la Foret's fingers twitched.
For there was even a whisper of peace-negotiations, than which nothing could have been more ill-timed. "I perceive by your message," said Leicester to Walsingham, "that your peace with Spain will go fast on, but this is not the way." Unquestionably it was not the way, and the whisper was, for the moment at least, suppressed.
He was not the man to crouch like Leicester, when he could no longer refresh himself in the "shadow of the Queen's golden beams," important as he knew her friendship to be to himself and his country. So he defended himself in a manly letter to the privy council against the censures of Elizabeth.
Thus from the 11th January, N.S., upon which day the first offer of the absolute government had been made to Leicester, nearly forty days had elapsed, during which long period the disobedient Earl had not sent one line, private or official, to her Majesty on this most important subject.
So poor Bardesius came back to Leicester, fell on his knees, and implored him; at least to pause in these fatal proceedings. After an interval, he sent two eminent statesmen, Valk and Menin, to lay the subject before the assembly. They did so, and it was met by fierce denunciation.
"Up there I don't think they realise the position so much as here. In Nottingham and Leicester, people are leading their usual daily lives. It was only as we neared London that one began to understand." "London is paralysed with fear," Ernshaw asserted, "perhaps with reason. The Government are working the telephones and telegraph to a very small extent.
There was the stately Leicester; Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror of chivalry; the gaunt and imposing form of William the Silent; his son; Count Maurice of Nassau, destined to be the first captain of his age, then a handsome, dark-eyed lad of fifteen; the Dauphin of Auvergne; the Marechal de Biron and his sons; the Prince of Espinoy; the Lords Sheffield; Willoughby, Howard; Hunsdon, and many others of high degree and distinguished reputation.
My dear Erasmus, you know that I have often prayed that I might never fall in love seriously, till I had some reasonable prospect of being able to marry; but I begin to retract my prayer for indifference, and to be of opinion that the most prudent thing a professional man can do is to fall in love to fall in love with such a woman as Sophia Leicester. What a new motive for exertion!
"If these men once smell any such matter," wrote Leicester to Burghley, "be you sure they will soon come before you, to the utter overthrow of her Majesty and state for ever." The Earl was suspecting the "false boys," by whom he was surrounded, although it was impossible for him to perceive, as we have been enabled to do, the wide-spread and intricate meshes by which he was enveloped.
Word Of The Day