and oppose all novelties and
impurities conflicting with it," and the Ambassador was instructed to see
that the countermine, worked so industriously against his Majesty's
service and the honour and reputation of the Provinces, did not prove
successful.

"To let the good mob play the master," he said, "and to permit hypocrites
and traitors in the Flemish manner to get possession of the government of
the provinces and cities, and to cause upright patriots whose faith and
truth has so long been proved, to be abandoned, by the blessing of God,
shall never be accomplished. Be of good heart, and cause these Flemish
tricks to be understood on every occasion, and let men know that we mean
to maintain, with unchanging constancy, the authority of the government,
the privileges and laws of the country, as well as the true Reformed
religion."

The statesman was more than ever anxious for moderate counsels in the
religious questions, for it was now more important than ever that there
should be concord in the Provinces, for the cause of Protestantism, and
with it the existence of the Republic, seemed in greater danger than at
any moment since the truce. It appeared certain that the alliance between
France and Spain had been arranged, and that the Pope, Spain, the
Grand-duke of Tuscany, and their various adherents had organized a strong
combination, and were enrolling large armies to take the field in the
spring, against the Protestant League of the princes and electors in
Germany. The great king was dead. The Queen-Regent was in the hand of
Spain, or dreamed at least of an impossible neutrality, while the priest
who was one day to resume the part of Henry, and to hang upon the sword
of France the scales in which the opposing weights of Protestantism and
Catholicism in Europe were through so many awful years to be balanced,
was still an obscure bishop.

The premonitory signs of the great religious war in Germany were not to
be mistaken. In truth, the great conflict had already opened in the
duchies, although few men as yet comprehended the full extent of that
movement. The superficial imagined that questions of hereditary
succession, like those involved in the dispute, were easily to be settled
by statutes of descent, expounded by doctors of law, and sustained, if
needful, by a couple of comparatively bloodless campaigns. Those who
looked more deeply into causes felt that the limitations of Imperial
authority, the ambition of a gre