.
A more common form was that of satire and scurrilous lampoon,--a
favorite weapon with the early Reformers. Their satirical sallies were
levelled indifferently at the throne and the Church. The bishops were an
obvious mark. No one was spared. Comedies were written to ridicule the
clergy. Never since the discovery of the art of printing--more than a
century before--had the press been turned into an engine of such
political importance as in the earlier stages of the revolution in the
Netherlands. Thousands of the seditious pamphlets thus thrown off were
rapidly circulated among a people, the humblest of whom possessed what
many a noble in other lands, at that day, was little skilled in,--the
art of reading. Placards were nailed to the doors of the magistrates, in
some of the cities, proclaiming that Rome stood in need of her Brutus.
Others were attached to the gates of Orange and Egmont, calling on them
to come forth and save their country.[683]

Margaret was filled with alarm at these signs of disaffection throughout
the land. She felt the ground trembling beneath her. She wrote again and
again to Philip, giving full particulars of the state of the public
sentiment, and the seditious spirit which seemed on the verge of
insurrection. She intimated her wish to resign the government.[684] She
besought him to allow the states-general to be summoned, and, at all
events, to come in person and take the reins from her hands, too weak to
hold them.--Philip coolly replied, that "he was sorry the despatches
from Segovia had given such offence. They had been designed only for the
service of God and the good of the country."[685]

In this general fermentation, a new class of men came on the stage,
important by their numbers, though they had taken no part as yet in
political affairs. These were the lower nobility of the country; men of
honorable descent, and many of them allied by blood or marriage with the
highest nobles of the land. They were too often men of dilapidated
fortunes, fallen into decay through their own prodigality, or that of
their progenitors. Many had received their education abroad, some in
Geneva, the home of Calvin, where they naturally imbibed the doctrines
of the great Reformer. In needy circumstances, with no better possession
than the inheritance of honorable traditions, or the memory of better
days, they were urged by a craving, impatient spirit, which naturally
made them prefer any change to the existing o