CHAPTER VII., Part 1.
The Earl of Leicester--His Triumphal Entrance into Holland--English Spies about him--Importance of Holland to England--Spanish Schemes for invading England--Letter of the Grand Commander--Perilous Position of England--True Nature of the Contest--wealth and Strength of the Provinces--Power of the Dutch and English People--Affection of the Hollanders for the Queen--Secret Purposes of Leicester-- Wretched condition of English Troops--The Nassaus and Hohenlo--The Earl's Opinion of them--Clerk and Killigrew--Interview with the States Government General offered to the Earl--Discussions on the Subject--The Earl accepts the Office--His Ambition and Mistakes--His Installation at the Hague--Intimations of the Queen's Displeasure-- Deprecatory Letters of Leicester--Davison's Mission to England-- Queen's Anger and Jealousy--Her angry Letters to the Earl and the States--Arrival of Davison--Stormy Interview with the Queen--The second one is calmer--Queen's Wrath somewhat mitigated--Mission of Heneago to the States--Shirley sent to England by the Earl--His Interview with Elizabeth At last the Earl of Leicester came.

Embarking at Harwich, with a fleet of fifty ships, and attended "by the flower and chief gallants of England"-- the Lords Sheffield, Willoughby, North, Burroughs, Sir Gervase Clifton, Sir William Russell, Sir Robert Sidney, and others among the number--the new lieutenant-general of the English forces in the Netherlands arrived on the 19th December, 1585, at Flushing.
His nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and Count Maurice of Nassau, with a body of troops and a great procession of civil functionaries; were in readiness to receive him, and to escort him to the lodgings prepared for him.
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was then fifty-four years of age.

There are few personages in English history whose adventures, real or fictitious, have been made more familiar to the world than his have been, or whose individuality has been presented in more picturesque fashion, by chronicle, tragedy, or romance.

Born in the same day of the month and hour of the day with the Queen, but two years before her birth, the supposed synastry of their destinies might partly account, in that age of astrological superstition, for the influence which he perpetually exerted.

They had, moreover, been fellow-prisoners together, in the commencement of the reign of Mary, and it is possible that he may have been the medium through which the indulgent expressions of Philip II.
were conveyed to the Princess Elizabeth.
His grandfather, John Dudley, that "caterpillar of the commonwealth," who lost his head in the first year of Henry VIII.