As to the private arrangements between France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense bound by them.

He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew nothing of its stipulations.
Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third.

They persuaded Mary de' Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so, and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with Aerssens.

The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the great princes, was very vehement--although she knew as much of those transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet--in maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.
"After talking with the ministers," said Aerssens, "I had an interview with the Queen.

I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on the payment of the Third.