chers, all printers of
heretical tracts, or artists who with their pencil had brought ridicule
on the Church of Rome,--all, in short, who were guilty of these or
similar iniquities, were to be punished with death and confiscation of
property. Lighter offences were to be dealt with according to the
measure of their guilt. The edict containing these humane provisions is
of considerable length, and goes into a large specification of offences,
from which few, if any, of the reformed could have been entirely
exempt.[908] When this ordinance of the regent was known at Madrid, it
caused great dissatisfaction. The king pronounced it "indecorous,
illegal, and altogether repugnant to the true spirit of
Christianity;"[909] and he ordered Margaret forthwith to revoke the
edict. It was accordingly repealed on the twenty-third of July
following. The reader who may be disposed to join heartily in the
malediction may not be prepared to learn that the cause of the royal
indignation was not that the edict was too severe, but that it was too
lenient! It nowhere denounced the right of private worship. A man might
still be a heretic at heart and at his own fireside, so long as he did
not obtrude it on the public. This did not suit the Inquisition, whose
jealous eye penetrated into the houses and the hearts of men, dragging
forth their secret thoughts into open day, and punishing these like
overt acts. Margaret had something yet to learn in the school of
persecution.[910]

While at Antwerp, the regent received an embassy from the elector of
Saxony, the landgrave of Hesse, and other Protestant princes of Germany,
interceding for the oppressed Lutherans, and praying that she would not
consent to their being so grievously vexed by the Catholic government.
Margaret, who was as little pleased with the plain terms in which this
remonstrance was conveyed as with the object of it, coldly replied, that
the late conduct of the Flemish Protestants doubtless entitled them to
all this sympathy from the German princes; but she advised the latter to
busy themselves with their own affairs, and leave the king of Spain to
manage his as he thought best.[911]

Of all the provinces, Holland was the only one which still made
resistance to the will of the regent. And here, as we have already seen,
was gathered a military array of some strength. The head-quarters were
at Brederode's town of Viana. But that chief had left his followers for
the present, and had bee