rder of things. They were,
for the most part, bred to arms; and, in the days of Charles the Fifth,
had found an ample career opened to their ambition under the imperial
banners. But Philip, with less policy than his father, had neglected to
court this class of his subjects, who, without fixed principles or
settled motives of action, seemed to float on the surface of events,
prepared to throw their weight, at any moment, into the scale of
revolution.

[Sidenote: THE COMPROMISE.]

Some twenty of these cavaliers, for the most part young men, met
together in the month of November, in Brussels, at the house of Count
Culemborg, a nobleman attached to the Protestant opinions. Their avowed
purpose was to listen to the teachings of a Flemish divine, named
Junius, a man of parts and learning, who had been educated in the school
of Calvin, and who, having returned to the Netherlands, exercised, under
the very eye of the regent, the dangerous calling of the missionary. At
this meeting of the discontented nobles, the talk naturally turned on
the evils of the land, and the best means of remedying them. The result
of the conferences was the formation of a league, the principal objects
of which are elaborately set forth in a paper known as the
"Compromise."[686]

This celebrated document declares that the king had been induced by evil
counsellors,--for the most part foreigners,--in violation of his oath,
to establish the Inquisition in the country; a tribunal opposed to all
law, divine and human, surpassing in barbarity anything ever yet
practised by tyrants,[687] tending to bring the land to utter ruin, and
the inhabitants to a state of miserable bondage. The confederates,
therefore, in order not to become the prey of those who, under the name
of religion, seek only to enrich themselves at the expense of life and
property,[688] bind themselves by a solemn oath to resist the
establishment of the Inquisition, under whatever form it may be
introduced, and to protect each other against it with their lives and
fortunes. In doing this, they protest that, so far from intending
anything to the dishonor of the king, their only intent is to maintain
the king in his estate, and to preserve the tranquillity of the realm.
They conclude with solemnly invoking the blessing of the Almighty on
this their lawful and holy confederation.

Such are some of the principal points urged in this remarkable
instrument, in which little mention is made of th