So long as there was a possibility of settlement upon that basis, the Advocate was in favour of settlement, but to give up the guarantees and play into the hands of the Catholic League was in his mind to make the Republic one of the conspirators against the liberties of Christendom.
"Spain, the Emperor and the rest of them," said he, "make all three modes of pacification--the treaty, the guarantee by the mediating kings, the administration divided between the possessory princes--alike impossible.
They mean, under pretext of sequestration, to make themselves absolute masters there.

I have no doubt that Villeroy means sincerely, and understands the matter, but meantime we sit by the fire and burn.

If the conflagration is neglected, all the world will throw the blame on us." Thus the Spaniards continued to amuse the British king with assurances of their frank desire to leave those fortresses and territories which they really meant to hold till the crack of doom.

And while Gondemar was making these ingenuous assertions in London, his colleagues at Paris and at Brussels distinctly and openly declared that there was no authority whatever for them, that the Ambassador had received no such instructions, and that there was no thought of giving up Wesel or any other of the Protestant strongholds captured, whether in the duchies or out of them.
And Gondemar, still more to keep that monarch in subjection, had been unusually flattering in regard to the Spanish marriage.

"We are in great alarm here," said the Advocate, "at the tidings that the projected alliance of the Prince of Wales with the daughter of Spain is to be renewed; from which nothing good for his Majesty's person, his kingdom, nor for our state can be presaged.