Calling a halt, after it had become obviously useless, with their small force of cavalry; to follow any longer, through a flooded country, an enemy who had abandoned his design, he solemnly conferred the honour of knighthood, in the name of Queen Elizabeth, on the officers who had most distinguished themselves during the siege, Francis Vere, Baskerville, Powell, Parker, Knowles, and on the two Netherland brothers, Paul and Marcellus Bax.
The Duke of Parma then went into winter quarters in Brabant, and, before the spring, that obedient Province had been eaten as bare as Flanders had already been by the friendly Spaniards.
An excellent understanding between England and Holland had been the result of their united and splendid exertions against the Invincible Armada.

Late in the year 1588 Sir John Norris had been sent by the Queen to offer her congratulations and earnest thanks to the States for their valuable assistance in preserving her throne, and to solicit their cooperation in some new designs against the common foe.

Unfortunately, however, the epoch of good feeling was but of brief duration.

Bitterness and dissension seemed the inevitable conditions of the English-Dutch alliance.

It will be, remembered, that, on the departure of Leicester, several cities had refused to acknowledge the authority of Count Maurice and the States; and that civil war in the scarcely-born commonwealth had been the result.