In truth, the negotiation for peace had been a vile mockery from the
beginning. Spain had no real intention of abdicating her claim to the
United Provinces.

At the very moment when the commissioners were categorically making that
concession in Brussels, and claiming such a price for it, Hoboken, the
archduke's diplomatic representative in London, was earnestly assuring
King James that neither his master nor Philip had the remotest notion of
renouncing their sovereignty over all the Netherlands. What had been
said and written to that effect was merely a device, he asserted, to
bring about a temporary truce. During the interval of imaginary freedom
it was certain that the provinces would fall into such dire confusion
that it would be easier for Spain to effect their re-conquest, after a
brief delay for repairing her own strength, than it would be by
continuing the present war without any cessation.

The Spanish ambassador at Vienna too on his part assured the Emperor
Rudolph that his master was resolved never to abdicate the sovereignty
of the provinces. The negotiations then going on, he said, were simply
intended to extort from the States a renunciation of the India trade and
their consent to the re-introduction of the Catholic religion throughout
their territories.

Something of all this was known and much more suspected at the Hague;
the conviction therefore that no faith would be kept with rebels and
heretics, whatever might be said or written, gained strength every day.
That these delusive negotiations with the Hollanders were not likely to
be so successful as the comedy enacted twenty years before at Bourbourg,
for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth and her diplomatists while the
tragedy of the Armada was preparing, might be safely prophesied.