ments with England, was at once sworn in as councillor of state in the assembly of the States-General.
As a staunch protestant, Winwood sympathised with the political and religious principles of the Dutch republic. He loathed Spain and the house of Austria, and he sought as far as his instructions permitted him to support the republic and the princes of the German union in their policy of hostility to Spain. He strongly urged the states to refuse permission to catholics to dwell within their jurisdiction. ‘Let the religion be taught and preached in its purity throughout your provinces without the least mixture,’ said Sir Ralph Winwood in the name of his sovereign. ‘Those who are willing to tolerate any religion whatever it may be, and try to make you believe that liberty for both is necessary in your commonwealth, are paving the way towards atheism’ (Motley, United Netherlands, iv. 491–2).
Winwood revisited England in 1607, and on 28 June of that year was knighted by the king at Richmond. He returned to The Hague in August, together with Sir Richard Spencer, in order to represent England at the conferences which were to arrange a treaty between Holland and England, and to suggest terms of peace between Holland and Spain after a strife of forty years. Prince Maurice had little faith in James I's and his ambassadors' protestations of good will to the republic, and Winwood and his colleague were warned by the English government to encourage the states to renew the war in Spain if they should find that they were resolute against peace (commission to Winwood and Spencer, 10 Aug., Rymer, xvi. 662; instructions, Winwood, ii. 329). Finally a general pacification was arranged, and the treaty of the states with England was signed by Winwood and Spencer on 26 June 1608. It was stipulated that the debt of the states to England, then amounting to 818,408l. sterling, should be settled by annual payments of 60,000l. Winwood did not expect to remain abroad longer. His London agent, John More, took a house for him at Westminster, and he entered into negotiations for the hire of a country house, so as to be near his friend Sir Henry Neville. But threatening movements in Germany, where war between the protestant and catholic princes was imminent, led to the imposition on Winwood of new duties on the continent.
The succession to the duchies of Juliers and Cleves was hotly disputed. In the autumn of 1609 Winwood was sent to Düsseldorf, in order to join the French ambassador, Boississe, in mediation between the protestant princes and the emperor, who alike laid claim to the territory. His task was difficult. James was anxious for peace. ‘My ambassadors,’ he wrote, ‘can do me no better service than in assisting to the treaty of this reconciliation.’ But no peace was possible, and Winwood returned to The Hague to enlist four thousand men in James I's service to fight against the emperor in behalf of the protestant claimants to the duchies. Nor were the internal affairs of the Dutch republic proceeding as James wished. In August 1609 Winwood delivered to the assembly of the states James I's remonstrance against the appointment to the professorship of theology at Leyden of Conrad Vorstius, a champion of Arminianism and Arianism. Little attention was paid to his protest at the moment. Subsequently Winwood was directed to negotiate a closer union between James and the protestant princes of the empire. The elector palatine was to marry James I's daughter Elizabeth. To show that something more than a merely family alliance was intended, James directed Winwood to attend a meeting of the German protestants at Wesel in the beginning of 1612, and to assent to a treaty by which the king of England and the princes of the union agreed upon the succours which they were mutually to afford to one another in case of need (28 March; Rymer, xvi. 714).
The death in 1612 of the Earl of Salisbury, with whom Winwood's relations had grown unsatisfactory of late, opened to him the prospect of employment at home. In July he was in England, and was employed by James in writing letters for him. The friends who sympathised with his religious and his political views deemed it desirable that he should become James's secretary. But at the end of July he was ordered to return to The Hague, and he stayed there till September 1613. He remained in name English agent at The Hague till March 1614, but did not leave England again.
Winwood lost no opportunity of paying court to the favourite, Rochester. At the close of 1613, when Rochester, just created earl of Somerset, was entertained, with his newly married wife (the divorced Countess of Essex), by the aldermen of London, the bride sent to Winwood to borrow his horses, on the ground that she had none good enough for her coach on such an occasion. Winwood answered that it was not fit for so great a lady to use anything borrowed, and begged that she would accept his horses as a present (Court and Times of James I, i. 284, 287). Somerset's friendship, which was thus cemented, proved of avail. On 29 March 1614 Winwood was appointed secretary of
