n managing great affairs." Margaret of Parma wrote letters to
him fixed with the warmest gratitude, expressions of approbation, and of
wishes that he could both remain in Antwerp and return to assist her in
Brussels. Philip, too, with his own pen, addressed him a letter, in which
implicit confidence in the Prince's character was avowed, all suspicion
on the part of the Sovereign indignantly repudiated, earnest thanks for
his acceptance of the Antwerp mission uttered, and a distinct refusal
given to the earnest request made by Orange to resign his offices. The
Prince read or listened to all this commendation, and valued it exactly
at its proper worth. He knew it to be pure grimace. He was no more
deceived by it than if he had read the letter sent by Margaret to Philip,
a few weeks later, in which she expressed herself as "thoroughly aware
that it was the intention of Orange to take advantage of the impending
tumults, for the purpose of conquering the provinces and of dividing the
whole territory among himself and friends." Nothing could be more utterly
false than so vile and ridiculous a statement.

The course of the Prince had hitherto been, and was still, both
consistent and loyal. He was proceeding step by step to place the monarch
in the wrong, but the only art which he was using, was to plant himself
more firmly upon the right. It was in the monarch's power to convoke the
assembly of the states-general, so loudly demanded by the whole nation,
to abolish the inquisition, to renounce persecution, to accept the great
fact of the Reformation. To do so he must have ceased to be Philip. To
have faltered in attempting to bring him into that path, the Prince must
have ceased to be William of Orange. Had he succeeded, there would have
been no treason and no Republic of Holland. His conduct at the outbreak
of the Antwerp troubles was firm and sagacious. Even had his duty
required him to put down the public preaching with peremptory violence,
he had been furnished with no means to accomplish the purpose. The
rebellion, if it were one, was already full-grown. It could not be taken
by the throat and strangled with one hand, however firm.

A report that the High Sheriff of Brabant was collecting troops by
command of government, in order to attack the Reformers at their
field-preachings, went far to undo the work already accomplished by the
Prince. The assemblages swelled again from ten or twelve thousand to
twenty-five thousand,