rtyr in a holy cause, and as such
he was regarded by Catholic public opinion. His deed was praised both by
Granvelle and Parma, and Philip bestowed a patent of nobility on his
family, and exempted them from taxation.

In Holland there was deep and general grief at the tragic ending of the
great leader, who had for so many years been the fearless and
indefatigable champion of their resistance to civil and religious
tyranny. He was accorded a public funeral and buried with great pomp
in the Nieuwe Kerk at Delft, where a stately memorial, recording his
many high qualities and services, was erected to his memory.

William of Orange was but fifty-one years of age when his life was thus
prematurely ended, and though he had been much aged by the cares and
anxieties of a crushing responsibility, his physicians declared that at
the time of his death he was perfectly healthy and that he might have
been spared to carry on his work for many years, had he escaped the
bullets of the assassin. But it was not to be. It is possible that he
should be reckoned in the number of those whose manner of death sets the
seal to a life-work of continuous self-sacrifice. The title of "Father
of his Country," which was affectionately given to him by Hollanders of
every class, was never more deservedly bestowed, for it was in the
Holland that his exertions had freed and that he had made the
impregnable fortress of the resistance to Spain that he ever felt more
at home than anywhere else. It was in the midst of his own people that
he laid down the life that had been consecrated to their cause. As a
general he had never been successful. As a statesman he had failed to
accomplish that union of the Netherlands, north and south, which at one
triumphant moment had seemed to be well-nigh realised by the
Pacification of Ghent. But he had by the spirit that he had aroused in
Holland and its sister province of Zeeland created a barrier against
Spanish domination in the northern Netherlands which was not to be
broken down.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

At the moment of the assassination of William the Silent it might well
have seemed to an impartial observer that the restoration of the
authority of the Spanish king over the whole of the Netherlands was only
a question of time. The military skill and the statecraft of Alexander
Farnese were making slow but sure progress in the reconqu