e, at the ceremony, placed the ducal mantle
on his shoulders, Anjou said to him, "Fasten it so well, prince,
that they cannot take it off again!"

During the rejoicings which followed this inauspicious ceremony,
Philip's proscription against the Prince of Orange put forth its
first fruits. The latter gave a grand dinner in the chateau of
Antwerp, which he occupied, on the 18th of March, the birthday
of the duke of Anjou; and, as he was quitting the dining-room,
on his way to his private chamber, a young man stepped forward
and offered a pretended petition, William being at all times of
easy access for such an object. While he read the paper, the
treacherous suppliant discharged a pistol at his head: the ball
struck him under the left ear, and passed out at the right cheek.
As he tottered and fell, the assassin drew a poniard to add suicide
to the crime, but he was instantly put to death by the attendant
guards. The young Count Maurice, William's second son, examined
the murderer's body; and the papers found on him, and subsequent
inquiries, told fully who and what he was. His name was John
Jaureguay, his age twenty-three years; he was a native of Biscay,
and clerk to a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, called Gaspar Anastro.
This man had instigated him to the crime; having received a promise
signed by King Philip, engaging to give him twenty-eight thousand
ducats and other advantages, if he would undertake to assassinate
the Prince of Orange. The inducements held out by Anastro to his
simple dupe, were backed strongly by the persuasions of Antony
Timmerman, a Dominican monk; and by Venero, Anastro's cashier, who
had from fear declined becoming himself the murderer. Jaureguay
had duly heard mass, and received the sacrament, before executing
his attempt; and in his pockets were found a catechism of the
Jesuits, with tablets filled with prayers in the Spanish language;
one in particular being addressed to the Angel Gabriel, imploring
his intercession with God and the Virgin, to aid him in the
consummation of his object. Other accompanying absurdities seem
to pronounce this miserable wretch to be as much an instrument
in the hands of others as the weapon of his crime was in his own.
Timmerman and Venero made a full avowal of their criminality, and
suffered death in the usual barbarous manner of the times. The
Jesuits, some years afterward, solemnly gathered the remains of
these three pretended martyrs, and exposed them as holy