What Lord Burghley’s action in the matter was is seen by his letters. Beale, one of the clerks of the Council, was sent over to Zeeland to report on Orange’s position, and to insist upon the suppression of piracy. Burghley thus writes to Walsingham (16th April 1576): “I have perused all the letters and memorandum of Mr. Beale’s concerning his voyage into Zeeland, and so well allow of the whole course therein taken by the Lords, that both with heart and hand I sign them.”[392] The Flushing pirates appear to have offered some insult to the Earl of Oxford, Burghley’s son-in-law, on his way to England, at which the Treasurer was extremely angry,[393] an unusual thing with him. In the same letter he writes: “I find it hard to make a good distinction between anger and judgment for Lord Oxford’s misusage, and especially when I look into the universal barbarism of the Prince’s (Orange) force of Flushingers, who are only a rabble of common pirates, or worse, who make no difference whom they outrage, I mistrust any good issue of the cause, though of itself it should be favoured.” He almost violently urges that Beale should ask the Prince of Orange to avenge such an insult “by hanging some of the principals.” “Such an outrage cannot be condoned without five or six of such thieves being hanged. If the Prince were rid of a hundred of them it would be better for the cause. You see my anger leadeth my judgment. But I am not truly more moved hereto for particular causes than for the public.”[394] The same day a very strong remonstrance from the English Council was written to Orange, saying that the piracy of the Flushing men was rendering his cause odious to all Christendom, and would ruin his enterprise.