was also reminded
that, whereas some persons had imagined the severity of the law "to be
only intended against Anabaptists, on the contrary, the edicts were to be
enforced on Lutherans and all other sectaries without distinction."
Moreover, in one of his last interviews with Philip, the King had given
him the names of several "excellent persons suspected of the new
religion," and had commanded him to have them put to death. This,
however, he not only omitted to do, but on the contrary gave them
warning, so that they might effect their escape, "thinking it more
necessary to obey God than man."

William of Orange, at the departure of the King for Spain, was in his
twenty-seventh year. He was a widower; his first wife, Anne of Egmont,
having died in 1558, after seven years of wedlock. This lady, to whom he
had been united when they were both eighteen years of age, was the
daughter of the celebrated general, Count de Buren, and the greatest
heiress in the Netherlands. William had thus been faithful to the family
traditions, and had increased his possessions by a wealthy alliance. He
had two children, Philip and Mary. The marriage had been more amicable
than princely marriages arranged for convenience often prove. The letters
of the Prince to his wife indicate tenderness and contentment. At the
same time he was accused, at a later period, of "having murdered her with
a dagger." The ridiculous tale was not even credited by those who
reported it, but it is worth mentioning, as a proof that no calumny was
too senseless to be invented concerning the man whose character was from
that hour forth to be the mark of slander, and whose whole life was to be
its signal, although often unavailing, refutation.

Yet we are not to regard William of Orange, thus on the threshold of his
great career, by the light diffused from a somewhat later period. In no
historical character more remarkably than in his is the law of constant
development and progress illustrated. At twenty-six he is not the "pater
patriae," the great man struggling upward and onward against a host of
enemies and obstacles almost beyond human strength, and along the dark
and dangerous path leading through conflict, privation, and ceaseless
labor to no repose but death. On the contrary, his foot was hardly on the
first step of that difficult ascent which was to rise before him all his
lifetime. He was still among the primrose paths. He was rich, powerful,
of sovereign rank.