Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/46

26 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 57. Meantime there was another ambassador December. . , . .. -^111 whose complicity came out with no less clear- ness than that of the Bishop of Ross. Doctor Man had been dismissed with scanty courtesy from Madrid ; Sir Henry Cobham had been received by Philip with studied insolence. There was an opportunity for repaying the Spanish Court in kind, and ridding England of a minister whose residence had been one continued plot against the throne. Don Guerau was summoned before the council. He was told that his practices had been discovered : in the three years which he had spent in England he had never ceased to trouble the quiet of the realm ; the Queen would no longer endure his presence, and he must be gone without delay. 1 Don Guerau, savage with disap- pointment, turned on Burghley, and said he was the cause of all the unkindness between his master and the Queen. But Burghley was now supreme again. The order was coldly repeated, and he was allowed four days to prepare for departure. There were two sides to the question. The ambas- sador, looking back over the history of the same three years, might well believe that the balance of right was in his own and in his master's favour. He knew, better than Elizabeth herself, the reluctance with which the King of Spain had accepted the quarrel which had been forced upon him, and the earnestness with which he had resisted the importunities of the Court of Rome and his own subjects. His coasts had been plundered, his 1 Words to be said to the Spanish ambassador, December 14 : MSS Spain.