The leaders of the States-General had a right to suspect the English Earl of a design to reenact the part of the Duke of Anjou, and were justified in taking stringent measures to prevent a calamity, which, as they believed, was impending over their little commonwealth.

The high-handed dealings of Leicester in the city of Utrecht have been already described.

The most respectable and influential burghers of the place had been imprisoned and banished, the municipal government wrested from the hands to which it legitimately belonged, and confided to adventurers, who wore the cloak of Calvinism to conceal their designs, and a successful effort had been made, in the name of democracy, to eradicate from one ancient province the liberty on which it prided itself.
In the course of the autumn, an attempt was made to play the same game at Amsterdam.

A plot was discovered, before it was fairly matured, to seize the magistrates of that important city, to gain possession of the arsenals, and to place the government in the hands of well-known Leicestrians.

A list of fourteen influential citizens, drawn up in the writing of Burgrave, the Earl's confidential secretary, was found, all of whom, it was asserted, had been doomed to the scaffold.
The plot to secure Amsterdam had failed, but, in North Holland, Medenblik was held firmly for Leicester, by Diedrich Sonoy, in the very teeth of the States.