She then seated herself--the deputies remaining on their knees on her right side and the Earl of Leicester standing at her left--and proceeded to make many remarks touching her earnestness in the pending negotiations to provide for their religious freedom. It seemed that she must have received a hint from Walsingham on the subject. "I shall provide," she said, "for the maintenance of the reformed worship." De Dieu--"The enemy will never concede it." The Queen.--"I think differently." De Dieu.--"There is no place within his dominions where he has permitted the exercise of the pure religion. He has never done so." The Queen.--"He conceded it in the pacification of Ghent." De Dieu.--"But he did not keep his agreement. Don John had concluded with the States, but said he was not held to his promise, in case he should repent; and the King wrote afterwards to our States, and said that he was no longer bound to his pledge." The Queen.--"That is quite another thing." De Dieu.--"He has very often broken his faith." The Queen.--"He shall no longer be allowed to do so. If he does not keep his word, that is my affair, not yours. It is my business to find the remedy. Men would say, see in what a desolation the Queen of England has brought this poor people. As to the freedom of worship, I should have proposed three or four years' interval--leaving it afterwards to the decision of the States." De Dieu.--"But the majority of the States is Popish." The Queen.--"I mean the States-General, not the States of any particular Province." De Dieu.--"The greater part of the States-General is Popish." The Queen.--"I mean the three estates--the clergy, the nobles, and the cities." The Queen--as the deputies observed--here fell into an error. She thought that prelates of the reformed Church, as in England, had seats in the States-General. Daniel de Dieu explained that they had no such position. The Queen.--"Then how were you sent hither?" De Dieu.--"We came with the consent of Count Maurice of Nassau." The Queen.--"And of the States?" De Dieu.--"We came with their knowledge." The Queen.--"Are you sent only from Holland and Zeeland? Is there no envoy from Utrecht and the other Provinces?" Helmichius.--"We two," pointing to his colleague Sossingius, "are from Utrecht." The Queen.--"What? Is this young man also a minister?" She meant Helmichius, who had a very little beard, and looked young. Sossingius.--"He is not so young as he looks." The Queen.--"Youths are sometimes as able as old men." De Dieu.--"I have heard our brother preach in France more than fourteen years ago." The Queen.--"He must have begun young. How old were you when you first became a preacher?" Helmichius.--"Twenty-three or twenty-four years of age."