THE FELICITIES OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 403 



vance her glory ; that both by her timely succours, 

 her neighbour kings were settled in their rightful 

 thrones, and the suppliant people, who by the ill 

 advisedness of their kings were abandoned and given 

 over to the cruelty of their ministers, and to the fury 

 of the multitude, and to all manner of butchery and 

 desolation, were relieved by her ; by reason whereof 

 they subsist unto this day. Neither was she a prin 

 cess less benign and fortunate in the influence of her 

 counsels, than of her succours ; as being one that had 

 oftentimes interceded to the King of Spain, to miti 

 gate his wrath against his subjects in the Netherlands, 

 and to reduce them to his obedience upon some 

 tolerable conditions ; and further, as being one that 

 did perpetually and upon all occasions, represent to 

 the French kings the observation of their own edicts, 

 so often declaring and promising peace to their sub 

 jects. I cannot deny but that these good counsels 

 of hers wanted the effect : in the former I verily 

 believe for the universal good of Europe, lest 

 happily the ambition of Spain, being unloosed from 

 its fetters, should have poured itself (as things then 

 stood) upon the other kingdoms and states of 

 Christendom : and for the latter the blood of so 

 many innocents with their wives and children slain 

 within their own harbours and nests by the scum of 

 the people, (who like so many mastiffs were let loose, 

 and heartened, and even set upon them by the state,) 

 would not suffer it ; which did continually cry unto 

 God for vengeance, that so blood-sucking a kingdom 

 might have her fill thereof, in the intestine slaugh- 



