fore long,
it was impossible for the twenty or thirty individuals called the States
to be in the same town with the man whom, at the commencement of the
year, they had greeted so warmly. The hatred between the Leicester
faction and the municipalities became intense, for the foundation of the
two great parties which were long to divide the Netherland commonwealth
was already laid. The mercantile patrician interest, embodied in the
states of Holland and Zeeland and inclined to a large toleration in the
matter of religion, which afterwards took the form of Arminianism, was
opposed by a strict Calvinist party, which desired to subject the
political commonwealth to the reformed church; which nevertheless
indulged in very democratic views of the social compact; and which was
controlled by a few refugees from Flanders and Brabant, who had succeeded
in obtaining the confidence of Leicester.

Thus the Earl was the nominal head of the Calvinist democratic party;
while young Maurice of Nassau; stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, and
guided by Barneveld, Buys, and other leading statesmen of these
Provinces; was in an attitude precisely the reverse of the one which he
was destined at a later and equally memorable epoch to assume. The chiefs
of the faction which had now succeeded in gaining the confidence of
Leicester were Reingault, Burgrave, and Deventer, all refugees.

The laws of Holland and of the other United States were very strict on
the subject of citizenship, and no one but a native was competent to hold
office in each Province. Doubtless, such regulations were
narrow-spirited; but to fly in the face of them was the act of a despot,
and this is what Leicester did. Reingault was a Fleming. He was a
bankrupt merchant, who had been taken into the protection of Lamoral
Egmont, and by that nobleman recommended to Granvelle for an office under
the Cardinal's government. The refusal of this favour was one of the
original causes of Egmont's hostility to Granvelle. Reingault
subsequently entered the service of the Cardinal, however, and rewarded
the kindness of his former benefactor by great exertions in finding, or
inventing, evidence to justify the execution of that unfortunate
nobleman. He was afterwards much employed by the Duke of Alva and by the
Grand Commander Requesens; but after the pacification of Ghent he had
been completely thrown out of service. He had recently, in a subordinate
capacity, accompanied the legations of th