I am indeed grieved that my actions cannot correspond with the ardent desire which I feel to serve your Majesty and these Provinces, for which I hope that my extreme youth will be accepted as an excuse.

And although I find myself feeble enough for the charge thus imposed upon me, yet God will assist my efforts to supply by diligence and sincere intention the defect of the other qualities requisite for my thorough discharge of my duty to the contentment of your Majesty.

To fulfil these obligations, which are growing greater day by day, I trust to prove by my actions that I will never spare either my labour or life." When it was found that the important town of Flushing was required as part of the guaranty to the Queen, Maurice, as hereditary seignor and proprietor of the place--during the captivity of his elder brother in Spain--signified his concurrence in the transfer, together with the most friendly feelings towards the Earl of Leicester, and to Sir Philip Sidney, appointed English governor of the town.

He wrote to Davison, whom he called "one of the best and most certain friends that the house of Nassau possessed in England," begging that he would recommend the interests of the family to the Queen, "whose favour could do more than anything else in the world towards maintaining what remained of the dignity of their house." After solemn deliberation with his step-mother, Louisa de Coligny, and the other members of his family, he made a formal announcement of adhesion on the part of the House of Nassau to the arrangements concluded with the English government, and asked the benediction of God upon the treaty.

While renouncing, for the moment, any compensation for his consent to the pledging of Flushing his "patrimonial property, and a place of such great importance"-- he expressed a confidence that the long services of his father, as well as those which he himself hoped to render, would meet in time with "condign recognition." He requested the Earl of Leicester to consider the friendship which had existed between himself and the late Prince of Orange, as an hereditary affection to be continued to the children, and he entreated the Earl to do him the honour in future to hold him as a son, and to extend to him counsel and authority; declaring, on his part, that he should ever deem it an honour to be allowed to call him father.
And in order still more strongly to confirm his friendship, he begged Sir Philip Sidney to consider him as his brother, and as his companion in arms, promising upon his own part the most faithful friendship.