De Spes left England with bitter resentment at the triumph of Burghley’s diplomacy. “They will now,” he says, “make themselves masters of the Channel, and with one blow, with their practices in Flanders, will plunge that country into a dreadful war. It is of no use now to speak of our lost opportunities. They have gone; but … steps may still be taken to make these people weep in their own country.” When he arrived in Flanders he made a long report of his embassy, containing the following interesting appreciation of Burghley as he appeared to his greatest enemy: “The principal person in the Council is William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, a Knight of the Garter. He is a man of mean sort, but very astute, false, lying, and full of artifice. He is a great heretic, and such a clownish Englishman as to believe that all the Christian princes joined together are not able to injure the sovereign of his country, and he therefore treats their ministers with great arrogance. This man manages the bulk of the business, and by means of his vigilance and craftiness, together with his utter unscrupulousness of word and deed, thinks to outwit the ministers of other princes, which to some extent he has hitherto succeeded in doing.”
Before De Spes was expelled, the efforts of Burghley, Walsingham, and De Foix had been successful in arranging the terms of a close political alliance between France and England. Elizabeth swore to Cavalcanti that she would never trust Spaniards again, and he might see how little she cared for the King of Spain by the way she had treated his Ambassador. She could, indeed, afford now to slight the most powerful monarch in the world; for one of the counter-strokes to the Spanish-Papal plot had been the concentration in the Channel of a great fleet of Flemish and Huguenot privateers under the Count de la Mark, and during the winter a plan had been perfected for the seizure by the “beggars” of Brille, the key to Zeeland. The imposition in Flanders of the tax which ruined Spain had been the last straw,[343] and the whole country was ripe for revolt. For some time an arrangement had been in progress with Louis of Nassau, by which the Huguenots should invade Flanders over the French frontier, in the interest of the Flemish Protestants. However friendly Elizabeth might be with France, this was a proceeding which was sure to be looked upon by English statesmen with profound distrust; and Walsingham, writing to Cecil on the last day of 1571,[344] says that he has been asked whether, in the event of the French entering Flanders, the Queen of England will take Zeeland, as the Flemings fear that the French may not be contented with Flanders. Some time before this, in September, Walsingham had urged Cecil to promote this invasion of Flanders by the French, as a means of keeping the Huguenots in power, as well as embarrassing Spain. “If not,” he says, “the Guises will bear sway, who will be so forward in preferring the conquest of Ireland, and the advancement of their niece to the crown of England, as the other side (_i.e._ the Huguenots) is contrariwise bent to prefer the conquest of Flanders.” When the immediate danger from the Guises was over, however, the idea of a French invasion of Flanders could not be calmly endured without some corresponding move in English interests, and joint action in the Netherlands was suggested. It is assumed by Motley and most other historians that the capture of Brille by the “beggars” under La Mark early in April was quite unpremeditated, but De Spes warned Alba that the affair was being planned in England at least six months before;[345] and the sending away from Dover of La Mark’s fleet did not, as Motley surmises, arise alone from Elizabeth’s fear of offending Spain—for that she had already done—but from the complaints of the Easterling merchants that their trade with England had become impossible whilst these freebooters of the seas lay off the coast. In any case, the surprise and seizure of Brille by the “beggars” once more gave Alba plenty to think about on his own side of the Straits; and England might, for the present, breathe freely again.