Such an amount of power could only be delegated by the sovereign.

Elizabeth had refused the sovereignty: it then rested with the States.

They only, therefore, were competent to confer the power which Elizabeth wished her favourite to exercise simply as her lieutenant-general.
Her wrathful and vituperative language damaged her cause and that of the Netherlands more severely than can now be accurately estimated.

The Earl was placed at once in a false, a humiliating, almost a ridiculous position.

The authority which the States had thus a second time offered to England was a second time and most scornfully thrust back upon them.
Elizabeth was indignant that "her own man" should clothe himself in the supreme attributes which she had refused.