Maximilian de Bethune. Those conferences have been purposely described
with some minuteness, in order that the difference often existing between
vast projects and diametrically opposed and very insignificant
conclusions might once more be exhibited.

In the summer of 1603 it had been firmly but mysteriously arranged
between the monarchs of France and Great Britain that the House of
Austria should be crushed, its territories parcelled out at the
discretion of those two potentates, the imperial crown taken from the
Habsburgs, the Spaniards driven out of the Netherlands, an alliance
offensive and defensive made with the Dutch republic, while the East and
West Indies were, to be wrested by main force of the allies, from Spain,
whose subjects were thenceforth to be for ever excluded from those
lucrative regions. As for the Jesuits, who were to James as loathsome
as were the Puritans to Elizabeth, the British sovereign had implored the
ambassador of his royal brother, almost with tears, never to allow that
pestilential brood to regain an entrance into his dominions.

In the summer of 1604 King James made a treaty of peace and amity with
the archdukes and with the monarch of Spain, thus extending his friendly
relations with the doomed house of Austria. The republic of the
Netherlands was left to fight her battles alone; her imaginary allies
looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference. As for the
Indies, not a syllable of allusion in the treaty was permitted by Spain
to that sacred subject; the ambassador informing the British Government
that he gave them access to twelve kingdoms and two seas, while Spain
acquired by the treaty access only to two kingdoms and one sea. The new
world, however, east or west, from the Antilles to the Moluccas, was the
private and indefeasible property of his Catholic Majesty. On religious
matters, it was agreed that English residents in Spain should not be