Of a certainty the English were no match for southern diplomacy.
But Elizabeth was now more impatient than ever that the other two preliminaries should be settled, the place of conferences, and the armistice.
"Be plain with the Duke," she wrote to her envoys, "that we have tolerated so many weeks in tarrying a commission, that I will never endure more delays.

Let him know he deals with a prince who prizes her honour more than her life: Make yourselves such as stand of your reputations." Sharp words, but not sharp enough to prevent a further delay of a month; for it was not till the 6th June that the commissioners at last came together at Bourbourg, that "miserable little hole," on the coast between Ostend and Newport, against which Gamier had warned them.

And now there was ample opportunity to wrangle at full length on the next preliminary, the cessation of arms.

It would be superfluous to follow the altercations step by step--for negotiations there were none--and it is only for the sake of exhibiting at full length the infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty, that we are hanging up this series of pictures at all.

Those bloodless encounters between credulity and vanity upon one side, and gigantic fraud on the other, near those very sands of Newport, and in sight of the Northern Ocean, where, before long, the most terrible battles, both by land and sea, which the age had yet witnessed, were to occur, are quite as full of instruction and moral as the most sanguinary combats ever waged.
At last the commissioners exchanged copies of their respective powers.
After four months of waiting and wrangling, so much had been achieved--a show of commissions and a selection of the place for conference.