Still the Queen of England did not at once break off all relations with the Hanseatic League. She temporized, not being willing to lose for her subjects the advantages gained at Hamburg which she hoped to see further extended. The Hansa, on its part, demanded that the queen should re-confirm its privileges; then it would accord a factory to the English. The queen replied that she wished first to see the factory accorded; then it would be time enough to speak of the privileges. In this wise the negotiations did not progress. Each of the parties was rolling the stone of Sisyphus, as Elizabeth herself remarked. It was quite evident that at that moment the queen was resolved not to resort to extreme measures, and though she threatened, she did not carry out her threat of putting the Hanseatics on the same footing with other strangers. The moment had not yet come. It came later, when she could do without certain of her imports, such as raw materials for ship-building and for stores of war, among which latter gunpowder took a great place. Then, too, before the defeat of the Spanish Armada had occurred, England did not feel her maritime power great enough to venture a _coup de force_. Meanwhile, each new meeting of the Hansa Diet put in a stronger light the radical difference between the policy pursued respectively by the towns of Lübeck and Hamburg. This difference may be said to form the tame epilogue to the great tragedy of Wullenweber's failure and death. The Lübeckers wanted the old privileges, the whole privileges, nothing but the privileges. What cared they for the changed condition of the world's affairs? Syndic Sudermann's ideal was the restoration of the good old customs in the factories, the continuance of every measure that in the past had made the Hansa great. But Sudermann was no military hero, who could win back privileges at the point of the sword, or "hold down foreign nations under his thumb," as the secretary of the Steelyard expressed himself. He was a learned, well-nourished, well-paid Hanseatic Syndic, thorough, pedantic, earnest, long-winded. It is on record that one of his memoranda destined for the Imperial Diet was so long, that a hundred and fifty dollars had to be paid in the Imperial Chancery for having it transcribed--an enormous sum in those days of cheap labour--and that the imperial councillors roundly declared that they would not read it at all, if it were not shortened. He it was who on all occasions represented Lübeck as her spokesman, and the ideas he expressed were those of the city.