ABSTRACT
On 18 November 1585 Philip and his brother Robert were forced to disembark near the Rammekins fort because bad weather had prevented them from reaching Flushing. Four days later Philip was sworn in as Governor at the States of Zeeland House at Middelburg and on the same day he drafted a long letter to Leicester detailing the inadequacies of the Flushing garrison. Leicester and his youngest nephew, Thomas Sidney, arrived at Flushing on 10 December and were welcomed with a grand banquet hosted by Philip at the house of Prince Maurice. The rest of December and early January were occupied with Leicester's quasi-royal progress, with Philip at his side, through Middelburg, Dordrecht, Delft, and The Hague, where on 1 January 1586 he was formally offered the Governor-Generalship by the States General. During the next ten days Philip was a key figure in the hard negotiations over the terms of Leicester's authority. Drawing upon exempla derived from Tacitus, Livy, and other Roman historians, Philip demanded for his uncle the absolute powers of a republican governor. He explained, according to a contemporary Dutch account, to the negotiators:
[when] the state of the Republic of Rome had been in utter peril or danger, as the Netherlands nowadays are ... it had been necessary to create a dictatorship, with absolute power and disposition over everything concerning the prosperity of the country, without any instruction, limitation or restriction,1
By accepting the considerable powers of the Governor-Generalship, Leicester triggered the fury of Elizabeth, who had expressly authorized his appointment only as Lieutenant-General of the English forces in the Low Countries. It was as though Leicester's grandiose status reminded her of the irritating magnificence in which Sir Henry Sidney had travelled as her pro-rex in Ireland. The public service of the Sidneys and Dudleys had, yet again, been contaminated by their ambitions. By identifying himself as her official governor Leicester had implicitly asserted her potential sovereignty over the Low Countries - a position which she had already categorically rejected. Outraged, she dispatched Sir Thomas Heneage to confront Leicester in person. Even her choice of messenger was intended as a deliberate rebuke since, twenty years earlier in late 1565, Heneage had been perhaps the first handsome young gentleman of the bedchamber to distract her eye away from the
charms of Robert Dudley. Now ensconced within her innermost court circle, Herieage was a painful reminder to Leicester of how his own influence over the queen had been diluted by other favourites. Elizabeth's instructions, dated 10 February 1586, stipulated that Heneage should tell Dudley: 'how highly upon just cause we are offended ... being done contrary to our commandments delivered unto him both by ourself in speech and by particular letters from certain of the Council ... which we do repute to be a very great and strange contempt least looked for at his hands, being he is a creature of our own'.
