The letters of the Queen to the States, to the council, and to the Earl himself, were, of necessity, delivered, but the reprimand which Heneage had been instructed to fulminate was made as harmless as possible.

It was arranged that he should make a speech before the council; but abstain from a protocol.

The oration was duly pronounced, and it was, of necessity, stinging.
Otherwise the disobedience to the Queen, would have been flagrant.

But the pain inflicted was to disappear with the first castigation.

The humiliation was to be public and solemn, but it was not to be placed on perpetual record.
"We thought best," said Leicester, Heneage, Clerk, and Killigrew--"In according to her Majesty's secret instructions--to take that course which might least endanger the weak estate of the Provinces--that is to say, to utter so much in words as we hoped might satisfy her excellent Majesty's expectation, and yet leave them nothing in writing to confirm that which was secretly spread in many places to the hindrance of the good course of settling these affairs.