The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1566 part 1 | Page 4

heads.--Be it so then. Let us take the pen let
them take the sword. For them deeds, for us words. We shall weep,

they will laugh. The Lord be praised for all; but I can not write this
without tears." This nervous language painted the situation and the
character of the writer.
As for Charles Mansfeld, he soon fell away from the league which he
had embraced originally with excessive ardor.
By the influence of the leaders many signatures were obtained during
the first two months of the year. The language of the document was
such that patriotic Catholics could sign it as honestly as Protestants. It
inveighed bitterly against the tyranny of "a heap of strangers," who,
influenced only by private avarice and ambition, were making use of an
affected zeal for the Catholic religion, to persuade the King into a
violation of his oaths. It denounced the refusal to mitigate the severity
of the edicts. It declared the inquisition, which it seemed the intention
of government to fix permanently upon them, as "iniquitous, contrary
to all laws, human and divine, surpassing the greatest barbarism which
was ever practised by tyrants, and as redounding to the dishonor of God
and to the total desolation of the country." The signers protested,
therefore, that "having a due regard to their duties as faithful vassals of
his Majesty, and especially, as noblemen--and in order not to be
deprived of their estates and their lives by those who, under pretext of
religion, wished to enrich themselves by plunder and murder," they had
bound themselves to each other by holy covenant and solemn oath to
resist the inquisition. They mutually promised to oppose it in every
shape, open or covert, under whatever mask, it might assume, whether
bearing the name of inquisition, placard, or edict, "and to extirpate and
eradicate the thing in any form, as the mother of all iniquity and
disorder." They protested before God and man, that they would attempt
nothing to the dishonor of the Lord or to the diminution of the King's
grandeur, majesty, or dominion. They declared, on the contrary, an
honest purpose to "maintain the monarch in his estate, and to suppress
all seditious, tumults, monopolies, and factions." They engaged to
preserve their confederation, thus formed, forever inviolable, and to
permit none of its members to be persecuted in any manner, in body or
goods, by any proceeding founded on the inquisition, the edicts, or the
present league.
It will be seen therefore, that the Compromise was in its origin, a
covenant of nobles. It was directed against the foreign influence by

which the Netherlands were exclusively governed, and against the
inquisition, whether papal, episcopal, or by edict. There is no doubt that
the country was controlled entirely by Spanish masters, and that the
intention was to reduce the ancient liberty of the Netherlands into
subjection to a junta of foreigners sitting at Madrid. Nothing more
legitimate could be imagined than a constitutional resistance to such a
policy.
The Prince of Orange had not been consulted as to the formation of the
league. It was sufficiently obvious to its founders that his cautious mind
would find much to censure in the movement. His sentiments with
regard to the inquisition and the edicts were certainly known to all men.
In the beginning of this year, too, he had addressed a remarkable letter
to the Duchess, in answer to her written commands to cause the
Council of Trent, the inquisition, and the edicts, in accordance with the
recent commands of the King, to be published and enforced throughout
his government. Although his advice on the subject had not been asked,
he expressed his sense of obligation to speak his mind on the subject,
preferring the hazard of being censured for his remonstrance, to that of
incurring the suspicion of connivance at the desolation of the land by
his silence. He left the question of reformation in ecclesiastical morals
untouched, as not belonging to his vocation: As to the inquisition, he
most distinctly informed her highness that the hope which still lingered
in the popular mind of escaping the permanent establishment of that
institution, had alone prevented the utter depopulation of the country,
with entire subversion of its commercial and manufacturing industry.
With regard to the edicts, he temperately but forcibly expressed the
opinion that it was very hard to enforce those placards now in their
rigor, when the people were exasperated, and the misery universal,
inasmuch as they had frequently been modified on former occasions.
The King, he said, could gain nothing but difficulty for himself, and
would be sure to lose the affection of his subjects by renewing the
edicts, strengthening the inquisition, and proceeding to fresh executions,
at a time when the people, moved by the example of their