It was one of the points concerning which they had been especially enjoined to complain, that the English cavalry, converted into highwaymen by want of pay, had been plundering the peasantry, and we have seen that Thomas Wilkes had "pawned his carcase" to provide for their temporary relief.
With regard to the insinuation that prominent personages in the country had been tampered with by the enemy, the envoys were equally astonished by such an attack.

The great Deventer treason had not yet been heard of in England for it had occurred only a week before this first interview--but something of the kind was already feared; for the slippery dealings of York and Stanley with Tassis and Parma, had long been causing painful anxiety, and had formed the subject of repeated remonstrances on the part of the 'States' to Leicester and to the Queen.

The deputies were hardly, prepared therefore to defend their own people against dealing privately with the King of Spain.

The only man suspected of such practices was Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault, whom the Earl had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances of the States, who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now in prison, and threatened with capital punishment.
To suppose that Buys or Barneveld, Roorda, Meetkerk, or any other leading statesman in the Netherlands, was contemplating a private arrangement with Philip II., was as ludicrous a conception as to imagine Walsingham a pensioner of the Pope, or Cecil in league with the Duke of Guise.

The end and aim of the States' party was war.