The English commander sent baskets of venison, wild fowl, and other game, which were rare in the market of a besieged town.
The Spanish governor responded with baskets of excellent wine and barrels of beer.

A very pleasant state of feeling, perhaps, to contemplate--as an advance in civilization over the not very distant days of the Haarlem and Leyden sieges, when barrels of prisoners' heads, cut off, a dozen or two at a time, were the social amenities usually exchanged between Spaniards and Dutchmen--but somewhat suspicious to those who had grown grey in this horrible warfare.
The Irish kernes too, were allowed to come to mass within the city, and were received there with as much fraternity by, the Catholic soldiers of Tassis as the want of any common dialect would allow--a proceeding which seemed better perhaps for the salvation of their souls, than--for the advancement of the siege.
The state-council had written concerning these rumours to Roland York, but the patient man had replied in a manner which Wilkes characterized as "unfit to have been given to such as were the executors of the Earl of Leicester's authority." The councillor implored the governor-general accordingly to send some speedy direction in this matter, as well to Roland York as to Sir William Stanley; for he explicitly and earnestly warned him, that those personages would pay no heed to the remonstrances of the state-council.
Thus again and again was Leicester--on whose head rested, by his own deliberate act, the whole responsibility--forewarned that some great mischief was impending.

There was time enough even then--for it was but the 16th December--to place full powers in the hands of the state-council, of Norris, or of Hohenlo, and secretly and swiftly to secure the suspected persons, and avert the danger.

Leicester did nothing.

How could he acknowledge his error?
How could he manifest confidence in the detested Norris?
How appeal to the violent and deeply incensed Hohenlo?
Three weeks more rolled by, and the much-enduring Roland York was still in confidential correspondence with Leicester and Walsingham, although his social intercourse with the Spanish governor of Zutphen continued to be upon the most liberal and agreeable footing.