Jacqueline of Holland Author:Thomas Colley Grattan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Written in the false and traitorous town of Mons, with a doleful heart, the 6th day of July. " Your sorrowful and well-beloved daughter, suffering great gri... more »ef for your service, " Jacqueline." It was impossible for Glocester to resist such appeals as these. On the receipt of this letter, delivered into his hands in London by the faithful Ludwick Van Monfoort, he gave himself no time for reflection or scruple. He at once made up his mind to accompany the bold Hollander to a proposed meeting with Jacqueline and the Bishop of Utrecht, which she did not venture to allude to in her written communication, but entrusted to Van Monfoort's verbal announcement, and which her secret departure from Mons with her mother enabled her to effect. The rough but honest eloquence of Van Monfoort made great impression on the lord protector ; and the picture presented to him ofJacqueline's heroic endurance of all the ills that beset her, caused him keen pangs of remorse, that he could only hope to allay by a prompt measure of generosity towards her. He immediately summoned the Earl of Salisbury and Lord Fitz-waiter to a secret council. The former of these, inflamed with jealousy against Philip of Burgundy, was anxiously longing for the protector's orders to set out with "a powerful armament, some time in preparation for another invasion of Hainault. But it still required delay to make ready an expedition on so large a scale. All, therefore that could for the moment be done, was to despatch the advanced guard of three thousand men, in itself an important reinforcement, under the command of Fitz-wal- ter, to aid the efforts of Bishop Zweder and the Hoeks, in Holland or Zealand, as might appear best, and strike a grand blow before Philip's preparations for invasion were complete, or that Bedford...« less