The states, reduced to this extremity, sent over a solemn embassy to London, and made anew an offer to the queen of acknowledging her for their sovereign, on condition of obtaining her protection and assistance. Elizabeth’s wisest counsellors were divided in opinion with regard to the conduct which she should hold in this critical and important emergence. Some advised her to reject the offer of the states, and represented the imminent dangers, as well as injustice, attending the acceptance of it. They said, that the suppression of rebellious subjects was the common cause of all sovereigns; and any encouragement given to the revolt of the Flemings, might prove the example of a like pernicious license to the English; that though princes were bound by the laws of the Supreme Being not to oppress their subjects, the people never were entitled to forget all duty to their sovereign, or transfer, from every fancy or disgust, or even from the justest ground of complaint, their obedience to any other master: that the queen, in the succors hitherto afforded the Flemings, had considered them as laboring under oppression, not as entitled to freedom; and had intended only to admonish Philip not to persevere in his tyranny, without any view of ravishing from him those provinces, which he enjoyed by hereditary right from his ancestors: that her situation in Ireland, and even in England, would afford that powerful monarch sufficient opportunity of retaliating upon her; and she must thenceforth expect that, instead of secretly fomenting faction, he would openly employ his whole force in the protection and defence of the Catholics: that the pope would undoubtedly unite his spiritual arms to the temporal ones of Spain: and that the queen would soon repent her making so precarious an acquisition in foreign countries, by exposing her own dominions to the most imminent danger.[*] * Camden, p. 507., Bentivoglio, part ii. lib iv.