The spectacle of the slobbering James among his Kars and Hays and Villiers's and other minions is one at which history covers her eyes and is dumb; but the republican envoys, with instructions from a Barneveld, were obliged to face him daily, concealing their disgust, and bowing reverentially before him as one of the arbiters of their destinies and the Solomon of his epoch.
A special embassy was sent early in the year to England to convey the solemn thanks of the Republic to the King for his assistance in the truce negotiations, and to treat of the important matters then pressing on the attention of both powers.

Contemporaneously was to be despatched the embassy for which Henry was waiting so impatiently at Paris.
Certainly the Advocate had enough with this and other, important business already mentioned to detain him at his post.

Moreover the first year of peace had opened disastrously in the Netherlands.

Tremendous tempests such as had rarely been recorded even in that land of storms had raged all the winter.

The waters everywhere had burst their dykes and inundations, which threatened to engulph the whole country, and which had caused enormous loss of property and even of life, were alarming the most courageous.