It was highly desirable that he should do so, for not one of the Provinces where he boasted his strength was quite secure for England.

Count Moeurs, a potent and wealthy noble, was governor of Utrecht and Gelderland, and he had already begun to favour the party in Holland which claimed for that Province a legal jurisdiction over the whole ancient episcopate.

Under these circumstances common prudence would have suggested that as good an understanding as possible might be kept up with the Dutch and German counts, and that the breach might not be rendered quite irreparable.
Yet, as if there had not been administrative blunders enough committed in one year, the unlucky lean Englishman, with the black beard, who was the Earl's chief representative, contrived--almost before his master's back was turned--to draw upon himself the wrath of all the fine ladies in Holland.

That this should be the direful spring of unutterable disasters, social and political, was easy to foretell.
Just before the governor's departure Otheman came to pay his farewell respects, and receive his last commands.

He found Leicester seated at chess with Sir Francis Drake.
"I do leave you here, my poor Otheman," said the Earl, "but so soon as I leave you I know very well that nobody will give you a good look." "Your Excellency was a true prophet," wrote the secretary a few weeks later, "for, my good Lord, I have been in as great danger of my life as ever man was.