The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1568 part 1 | Page 2

left the
Netherlands, he had begun his machinations to make himself master of
the country and to expel his sovereign by force, if he should attempt to
return to the provinces; that he had seduced his Majesty's subjects by
false pretences that the Spanish inquisition was about to be introduced;
that he had been the secret encourager and director of Brederode and
the confederated nobles; and that when sent to Antwerp, in the name of
the Regent, to put down the rebellion, he had encouraged heresy and
accorded freedom of religion to the Reformers.
The articles against Hoogstraaten and the other gentlemen mere of
similar tenor. It certainly was not a slender proof of the calm effrontery
of the government thus to see Alva's proclamation charging it as a
crime upon Orange that he had inveigled the lieges into revolt by a
false assertion that the inquisition was about to be established, when
letters from the Duke to Philip, and from Granvelle to Philip, dated
upon nearly the same day, advised the immediate restoration of the
inquisition as soon as an adequate number of executions had paved the
way for the measure. It was also a sufficient indication of a reckless
despotism, that while the Duchess, who had made the memorable
Accord with the Religionists, received a flattering letter of thanks and a
farewell pension of fourteen thousand ducats yearly, those who, by her
orders, had acted upon that treaty as the basis of their negotiations,
were summoned to lay down their heads upon the block.
The Prince replied to this summons by a brief and somewhat
contemptuous plea to the jurisdiction. As a Knight of the Fleece, as a
member of the Germanic Empire, as a sovereign prince in France, as a
citizen of the Netherlands, he rejected the authority of Alva and of his
self- constituted tribunal. His innocence he was willing to establish
before competent courts and righteous judges. As a Knight of the
Fleece, he said he could be tried only by his peers, the brethren of the
Order, and, for that purpose, he could be summoned only by the King
as Head of the Chapter, with the sanction of at least six of his
fellow-knights. In conclusion, he offered to appear before his Imperial

Majesty, the Electors, and other members of the Empire, or before the
Knights of the Golden Fleece. In the latter case, he claimed the right,
under the statutes of that order, to be placed while the trial was pending,
not in a solitary prison, as had been the fate of Egmont and of Horn, but
under the friendly charge and protection of the brethren themselves.
The letter was addressed to the procurator-general, and a duplicate was
forwarded to the Duke.
From the general tenor of the document, it is obvious both that the
Prince was not yet ready to throw down the gauntlet to his sovereign,
nor to proclaim his adhesion to the new religion: Of departing from the
Netherlands in the spring, he had said openly that he was still in
possession of sixty thousand florins yearly, and that he should
commence no hostilities against Philip, so long as he did not disturb
him in his honor or his estates. Far-seeing politician, if man ever were,
he knew the course whither matters were inevitably tending, but he
knew how much strength was derived from putting an adversary
irretrievably in the wrong. He still maintained an attitude of dignified
respect towards the monarch, while he hurled back with defiance the
insolent summons of the viceroy. Moreover, the period had not yet
arrived for him to break publicly with the ancient faith. Statesman,
rather than religionist, at this epoch, he was not disposed to affect a
more complete conversion than the one which he had experienced. He
was, in truth, not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience. His
mind was already expanding beyond any dogmas of the age. The man
whom his enemies stigmatized as atheist and renegade, was really in
favor of toleration, and therefore, the more deeply criminal in the eyes
of all religious parties.
Events, personal to himself, were rapidly to place him in a position
from which he might enter the combat with honor.
His character had already been attacked, his property threatened with
confiscation. His closest ties of family were now to be severed by the
hand of the tyrant. His eldest child, the Count de Buren, torn from his
protection, was to be carried into indefinite captivity in a foreign land.
It was a remarkable oversight, for a person of his sagacity, that, upon
his own departure from the provinces, he should leave his son, then a
boy of thirteen years, to pursue his studies at the college of Louvain.
Thus exposed to the