monsters who were now revelling in the blood and lives of the Netherlanders, there stands out one conspicuous monster, Peter Titlemann by name; not that he was more cruel than the rest of the crew, but because his cruelty stands horridly out against a grim pleasantry that seems to have characterised the man. "Contemporary chroniclers," says Motley, "give a picture of him as of some grotesque yet terrible goblin, careering through the country by night or day, alone, on horseback, smiting the trembling peasants on the head with a great club, spreading dismay far and wide, dragging suspected persons from their firesides or their beds, and thrusting them into dungeons, arresting, torturing, strangling, burning, with hardly the shadow of warrant, information, or process." 1

The whole face of the Low Countries during the years of which we write (1560-65), was crossed and recrossed with lines of blood, traced by the cruel feet of monsters like this man. It was death to pray to God in one's own closet; it was death not to bow when an image was carried past one in the street; it was death to copy a hymn from a Genevese psalter, or sing a psalm; it was death not to deny the heresy of which one was suspected when one was questioned, although one had never uttered it. The monster of whom we have made mention above one day arrested Robert Ogier of Ryssel, with his wife and two sons. The crime of which they were accused was that of not going to mass, and of practising worship at home. The civil judges before whom Titlemann brought them examined them touching the rites they practised in private. One of the sons answered, "We fall on our knees and pray that God may enlighten our minds and pardon our sins; we pray for our sovereign, that his reign may be prosperous, and his life happy; we pray for our magistrates, that God may preserve them." This artless answer, from a mere boy, touched some of the judges, even to tears. Nevertheless the father and the elder son

were adjudged to the flames. "O God," prayed the youth at the stake, "Eternal Father, accept the sacrifice of our lives in the name of thy beloved Son!" "Thou liest, scoundrel!" fiercely interrupted a monk, who was lighting the fire. "God is not your father; ye are the devil's children." The flames rose; again the boy exclaimed, “Look, my father, all heaven is opening, and I see ten hundred thousand angels rejoicing over us. Let us be glad, for we are dying for the truth." "Thou liest, thou liest," again screamed the

1 Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. i., p. 170; Edin., 1859.

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monk; "I see hell opening, and ten thousand devils waiting to thrust you into eternal fire." The father and son were heard talking with one another in the midst of the flames, even when they were at the fiercest; and so they continued till both expired.2

If the fury of the persecutor was great, not less was the heroism of these martyrs. They refused all communion with Rome, and worshipped in the Protestant forms, in the face of all the dreadful penalties with which they were menaced. Nor was it the men only who were thus courageous; women-nay, young girls-animated by an equal faith, displayed an equal fortitude. Some of them refused to flee when the means of escape from prison were offered to them. Wives would take their stand by their husband's stake, and while he was enduring the fire they would whisper words of solace, or sing psalms to cheer him; and so, in their own words, would they bear him company while "he was celebrating his last wedding feast." Young maidens would lie down in their living grave as if they were entering into their chamber of nightly sleep; or go forth to the scaffold and the fire, dressed in their best apparel, as if they were going to their marriage. In April, 1554, Galein de Mulere, schoolmaster at Oudenard, was arrested by Inquisitor Titlemann. The poor man was in great straits, for he had a wife and five young children, but he feared to deny God and the truth. He endeavoured to extricate himself from the dilemma by demanding to be tried before the magistrate and not by the Inquisition. "You are my prisoner," replied Titlemann; "I am the Pope's and the emperor's plenipotentiary." The schoolmaster gave, at first, evasive answers to the questions put to him. "I adjure thee not to trifle with me," said Titlemann, and cited Scripture to enforce his adjuration; "St. Peter," said the terrible inquisitor, "commands us "commands us to be ready always to give to every man that asketh us, a reason of the hope that is in us." On these words the schoolmaster's tongue broke loose. "My God, my God, assist me now according to thy promise," prayed he. Then turning to the inquisitors he said, "Ask me now what you please, I shall plainly answer." He then laid open to them his whole belief, concealing nothing of his abhorrence of Popery, and his love for the Saviour. They used all imaginable arts to induce him to recant; and finding that no argument would prevail with him, "Do you not love your wife and children?" said they to him as the last appeal. "You know,"

2 Brandt, vol. i., pp. 108, 109.

a Ibid., vol. i., p. 93.

replied he, "that I love them from my heart; and I tell you truly, if the whole world were turned into gold, and given to me, I would freely resign it, so that I might keep these dear pledges with me in my confinement, though I should live upon bread and water." "Forsake then," said Titlemann, "your heretical opinions, and then you may live with your wife and children as formerly." "I shall never," he replied, "for the sake of wife and children renounce my religion, and sin against God and my conscience, as God shall strengthen me with his grace." He was pronounced a heretic; and being delivered to the secular arm, he was strangled and burned.1

The very idiots of the nation lifted up their voice in reproof of the tyrants, and in condemnation of the tyranny that was scourging the country. The following can hardly be read without horror. At Dixmuyde, in Flanders, lived one Walter Capel, who abounded in almsgiving, and was much beloved by the poor. Among others whom his bounty had fed was a poor simple creature, who hearing that his benefactor was being condemned to death (1553), forced his way into the presence of the judges, and cried out, "Ye are murderers, ye are murderers; ye spill innocent blood; the man has done no ill, but has given me bread." When Capel was burning at the stake, this man would have thrown himself into the flames and died with his patron, had he not been restrained by force. Nor did his gratitude die with his benefactor. He went daily to the gallows-field where the half-burned carcase was fastened to a stake, and gently stroking the flesh of the dead man with his hand, he said, "Ah, poor creature, you did no harm, and yet they have spilt your blood. You gave me my bellyful of victuals." When the flesh was all gone, and nothing but the bare skeleton remained, he took down the bones, and laying them upon his shoulders, he carried them to the house of one of the burgomasters, with whom it chanced that several of the magistrates were at that moment feasting. Throwing his ghastly burden at their feet, he cried out, "There, you murderers, first you have eaten his flesh, now eat his bones.""

before the inquisitors, they freely confessed their opinions. Meanwhile, the Dutch congregation in London procured letters from the Archbishop of Canterbury and other English prelates, which were forwarded to the magistrates of Furness, where they were confined in prison. The writers said that they had been informed of the apprehension of the three travellers; that they were the subjects of the Queen of England; that they had gone into the Low Countries for the dispatch of their private affairs, with intent to return to England; that they had avoided disputes and contest by the way, and therefore could not be charged with the breach of any law of the land; that none of the Flemings had been meddled with in England, but that if now those who had put themselves under English jurisdiction, and were members of the English Church, were to be thus treated in other countries, they should be likewise obliged, though much against their wills, to deal out the same measure to foreigners. foreigners. Nevertheless, they expected the magistrates of Furness to show prudence and justice, and abstain from the spilling of innocent blood.

The magistrates, on receipt of this letter, deputed two of their number to proceed to Brussels, and lay it before the Council. It was read at the Board, but that was all the attention it received. The Council resolved to proceed with the prisoners according to the edicts. A few days thereafter they were conducted to the court to receive their sentence, their brethren in the faith lining the way, and encouraging and comforting them. They were condemned to die. They went cheerfully to the stake. A voice addressing them from the crowd was heard, saying, "Joan, behave valiantly; the crown of glory is prepared for you." It was that of John Bels, a Carmelite friar. While the executioner was fastening them to the stake, with chains put round their necks and feet, they sang the 130th Psalm, "Out of the depths have I cried to thee, O Lord;" whereupon a Dominican, John Campo, cried out, "Now we perceive you are no Christians, for Christ went weeping to his death;" to which one of the bystanders immediately made answer, "That's a lie, you false prophet." The martyrs were then strangled and scorched, and their bodies publicly hung in chains in the gallowsfield. Their remains were soon after taken down by the Protestants of Furness, and buried.3

These men, although in number amounting to many thousands, were only the first rank of that greater army of martyrs which was to come after them. With the exception of a very few, we do not

3 Brandt, vol. i., p. 135.

know even the names of the men who so willingly offered their lives to plant the Gospel in their native land. They were known only in the town, or village, or district in which they resided, and did not receive, as they did not seek, wider fame. But what matters it? They themselves are safe, and so too are their names. Not one of them but is inscribed in a record more lasting than the historian's page, and from which they can never be blotted out. They were mostly men in humble station-weavers, tapestry-workers, stone-cutters, tanners; for the nobles of the Netherlands, not even excepting the Prince of Orange, had not yet abjured the Popish faith, or embraced that of Pro

29

testantism. While the nobles were fuming at the pride of Granvelle, or humbly but uselessly petitioning Philip, or fighting wordy battles at the Councilboard, they left it to the middle and lower classes to bear the brunt of the great war, and jeopardise their lives in the high places of the field. These humble men were the true nobles of the Netherlands. Their blood it was that broke the power of Spain, and redeemed their native land from vassalage. Their halters and stakes formed the basis of that glorious edifice of Dutch freedom which the next generation was to see rising proudly aloft, and which, but for them, would never have been raised.

THE murmurs of the popular discontent grew louder every day. In that land the storm is heard long to mutter before the sky blackens and the tempest bursts; but now there came, not indeed the hurricane-that was deferred for a few years --but a premonitory burst like the sudden wave which, while all as yet is calm, the ocean sends as the herald of the storm. At Valenciennes were two ministers, Faveau and Mallart, whose preaching attracted large congregations. They were condemned in the autumn of 1561 to be burned. When the news spread in Valenciennes that their favourite preachers had been ordered for execution, the inhabitants turned out upon the street, now chanting Clement Marot's psalms, and now hurling menaces at the magistrates should they dare to touch their preachers. The citizens crowded round the prison, encouraging the ministers, and promising to rescue them should an attempt be made to put them to death. These commotions were continued nightly for the space of six months. The magistrates were in a strait between the two evils-the anger of the cardinal, who was daily sending them peremptory orders to have the heretics burned, and the wrath of the

people, which was expressed in furious menaces should they do as Granvelle ordered. At last they made up their minds to brave what they took to be the lesser evil, for they trusted that the people would not dare openly to resist the law. The magistrates brought forth Faveau and Mallart one Monday morning, before sunrise, led them to the market-place, where preparations, had been made, tied them to the stake, and were about to light the fires and consume them. At that moment a woman in the crowd threw her shoe at the stake; it was the preconcerted signal. The mob tore down the barriers, scattered the faggots, and chased away the executioners. The guard, however, had adroitly carried off the prisoners to their dungeon. But the people were not to be baulked; they kept possession of the street; and when night came they broke open the prison, and brought forth the two ministers, who made their escape from the city. This was called "The Day of the Ill-burned," one of the ministers having been scorched by the partially kindled faggots before he was rescued.'

A terrible revenge was taken for the slur thus

1 Brandt, vol. i., pp. 138, 139.

cast upon the Inquisition, and the affront offered to the authority of Granvelle. Troops were poured into the ill-fated city. The prisons were filled with men and women who had participated, or were suspected of having participated, in the riot. The magistrates who had trembled before were furious now. They beheaded and burned almost indiscriminately; the amount of blood spilt was truly frightful-to be remembered at a future day by the nation, and atonement demanded for it.

We return to the Council-board at Brussels, and the crafty tyrannical man who presided at it-the minion of a craftier and more tyrannical—and who, buried in the depths of his cabinet, edited his edicts of blood, and sent them forth to be executed by his agents. The bickerings still continued at the Council-table, much to the disgust of Granvelle. But besides the rough assaults of Egmont and Horn, and the delicate wit and ridicule of Orange, other assailants arose to embitter the cardinal's existence, and add to the difficulties of his position. The Duchess of Parma became alienated from him. As regent, she was nominal head of the government, but the cardinal had reduced her to the position of a puppet, by grasping the whole power of the States, and leaving to her only an empty title. However, the cardinal consoled himself by reflecting that if he had lost the favour of Margaret, he could very thoroughly rely on that of Philip, who, he knew, placed before every earthly consideration the execution of his edicts against heresy. But what gave more concern to Granvelle was a class of foes that now arose outside the Council-chamber to annoy and sting him. These were the members of the "Rhetoric Clubs." We find similar societies springing up in other countries of the Reformation, especially in France and Scotland, and they owed their existence to the same cause that is said to make wit

flourish under a despotism. These clubs were composed of authors, poetasters, and comedians; they wrote plays, pamphlets, pasquils, in which they lashed the vices and superstitions, and attacked the despotisms of the age. They not only assailed error, but in many instances they were also largely instrumental in the diffusion of truth. They discharged the same service to that age which the newspaper and the platform fulfil in ours. The literature of these poems and plays was not high; the wit was not delicate, nor the satire polishedthe wood-carving that befits the interior of a cathedral would not suit for the sculpture-work of its front-but the writers were in earnest; they went straight to the mark, they expressed the pent-up feeling of thousands, and they created and intensified the feeling which they expressed.

Such was the battery that was now opened upon the minion of Spanish and Papal tyranny in the Low Countries. The intelligent, clever, and witty artisans of Ghent, Bruges, and other towns chastised Granvelle in their plays and lampoons, ridiculed him in their farces, laughed at him in their burlesques, and held him up to contempt and scorn in their caricatures. The weapon was rough, but the wound it inflicted was rankling. These farces were acted in the street, where all could see them, and the poem and pasquil were posted on the walls where all could read them. The members of these clubs were individually insignificant, but collectively they were most formidable. Neither the sacredness of his own purple, nor the dread of Philip's authority, could afford the cardinal any protection. As numerous as a crowd of insects, the annoyances of his enemies were ceaseless as their stings were countless. As a sample of the broad humour and rude but truculent satire with which Philip's unfortunate manager in the Netherlands was assailed, we take the following caricature. In it the worthy cardinal was seen occupied in the maternal labour of hatching a brood of bishops. The ecclesiastical chickens were

in all stages of development. Some were only chipping the shell; some had thrust out their heads and legs; others, fairly disencumbered from their original envelopments, were running about with mitres on their heads. Each of these fledglings bore a whimsical resemblance to one or other of the new bishops. But the coarsest and most cutting part of the caricature remains to be noticed. Over the cardinal was seen to hover a dark figure, with certain appendages other than appertain to the human form, and that personage was made to say, "This is beloved son, my him." ye

hear

Such continued for some years to be the unsatisfactory and eminently dangerous state of affairs in the Low Countries. The regent Margaret, humiliated by the ascendency of Granvelle, and trembling at the catastrophe to which his rigour was driving matters, proposed that the States should be summoned, in order to concert measures for restoring the tranquillity of the nation. Philip would on no account permit such an assembly to be convoked. Margaret had to yield, but she resorted to the next most likely expedient. She summoned a meeting of the Knights of the Golden Fleece and the Stadtholders of the Provinces. Viglius, one of the members of Council, but less obnoxious than Granvelle, was chosen to address the knights. He a learned man, and discoursed, with much

was

1 Hooft, ii. 42-apud Motley, i. 178. Brandt, i. 127, 128.