eived great encouragement from the French Protestants, would, he
hoped, finally despair of success, after the entire suppression of their
friends and confederates.

* Camden, p 452.

The same political views which engaged Elizabeth to support the Hugonots
would have led her to assist the distressed Protestants in the Low
Countries; but the mighty power of Philip, the tranquillity of all
his other dominions, and the great force which he maintained in these
mutinous provinces, kept her in awe, and obliged her, notwithstanding
all temptations and all provocations, to preserve some terms of amity
with that monarch. The Spanish ambassador represented to her, that many
of the Flemish exiles, who infested the seas, and preyed on his master's
subjects, were received into the harbors of England, and were there
allowed to dispose of their prizes; and by these remonstrances the queen
found herself under a necessity of denying them all entrance into her
dominions.

But this measure proved in the issue extremely prejudicial to the
interests of Philip. These desperate exiles, finding no longer any
possibility of subsistence, were forced to attempt the most perilous
enterprises; and they made an assault on the Brille, a seaport town
in Holland, where they met with success, and after a short resistance
became masters of the place.[*]

* Camden, p. 443.

The duke of Alva was alarmed at the danger; and stopping those bloody
executions which he was making on the defenceless Flemings, he hastened
with his army to extinguish the flame, which, falling on materials so
well prepared for combustion, seemed to menace a general conflagration.
His fears soon appeared to be well grounded. The people in the
neighborhood of the Brille, enraged by that complication of cruelty,
oppression, insolence, usurpation, and persecution, under which they and
all their countrymen labored, flew to arms; and in a few days almost all
the whole province of Holland and that of Zealand had revolted from the
Spaniards, and had openly declared against the tyranny of Alva. This
event happened in the year 1572.

William, prince of Orange, descended from a sovereign family of great
lustre and antiquity in Germany, inheriting the possessions of
a sovereign family in France, had fixed his residence in the Low
Countries; and on account of his noble birth and immense riches, as
well as of his personal merit, was universally regarded as the greatest
subject th