Note 138 — Chapter VI
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He had prevailed on Grimaldi to attempt making peace; but the latter having the fate of Squillace before his eyes, would not take it on himself, but advised his master to call the Castilians to council. They, persuaded that a commercial nation, as England was, would not make war for a rock, exhorted the King to maintain his point of honour. D’Aranda, his favourite, agreed with the Castilians; but though the King, who, from the time he was King of Naples, and had been humbled into a neutrality by our navy, hated this country, yet he was at that moment so much influenced by Grimaldi, that he rose abruptly and broke up the council. [The King, independently of Grimaldi, was personally inclined to come to an accommodation with England at almost any rate.—(Malmesbury Dispatches, vol. ii. p. 66.)—E.]