high and conscientious motives, Philip assembled a council of divines, at which Egmont assisted, and put to them the question, whether he was bound to grant that liberty of conscience which some of the Dutch towns so earnestly craved of him? The judgment of the majority was that, taking into account the present troubles in the Low Countries fre--which, unless means were found for allaying them, ments and arts had the effect, which doubtless they might result in the Provinces falling away from their obedience to the king's authority and to their duty to the one true Church-his Majesty might accord them some freedom in matters of religion without sinning against God. On this judgment being intimated to Philip, he informed the Fathers that they had misapprehended the special point of conscience he wished to have resolved. What he desired to know was, whether he must, not whether he might grant the liberty his Flemish subjects desired. The ecclesiastics made answer plainly that they did not think that the king was bound in conscience'so to do. Whereupon Philip, falling down before a crucifix, addressed it in these words :-"I beseech thee, O God and Lord of all things, that I may persevere all the days of my life in the same mind as I am now, never to be a king, nor called so of any country, where thou art not acknowledged for Lord." 1 Egmont's embassy to the court of Spain being now ended, he set out on his return to the Low Countries. He was accompanied on his journey by the young Prince Alexander of Parma, the nephew of Philip, and son of Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, and whose destiny it was in afteryears to be fatally mixed up with the tragic woes of that land on which he now set foot for the first time. The results of Egmont's mission were already known at Brussels by letters from Spain, which, although written after his departure from Madrid, had arrived before him; nevertheless, he appeared in the Council on the 5th of May, 1565, and gave in a report of the measures which the king had in contemplation for the pacification of the Provinces. The Prince of Orange clearly saw that the "holy water" of the court had been sprinkled on Egmont, and that the man who had gone forth a patriot had come back a courtier and apologist. The deputy informed the Council that on the matter of the edicts no relaxation was to be expected. Heresy must be rooted out. Touching the meeting of the States-General, the king would send his decision to the regent. This was all. Verily Egmont had gone far and brought back little. But he had a little codicil or postscript in reserve for the Council, to the effect that Philip graciously granted leave for a synod of ecclesiastics, with a few civilians, to convene and concert measures for the instruction of the people, the reformation of the schools, and the purgation of heresy. And further, if the penal laws now in use did not serve their end, they had Philip's permission to substitute others "more efficacious." The Prince of Orange and others were willing to believe that by the 1 Strada, p. 183-apud Brandt, vol. i., pp. 150, 151. Laval, vol. iii., p. 134. During the absence of Egmont, the persecution did not slacken. In February, Joost de Cruel was beheaded at Rosen. He had been first drawn to the Reformed faith by a sermon by Peter Titlemann, Dean of Rosen, who had since become the furious persecutor we have described above. In the same month, John Disreneaux, a man of seventy years, was burned at Lisle. At the same time, John de Graef was strangled and burned at Hulst, with the New Testament hung round his neck. His persecutors had subjected him while in prison to the extremities of hunger, and thirst, and cold, in the hope of subduing him. Mortification had set in, and he went halting to death, his frost-bitten toes and feet refusing their office. Tranquil and courageous, notwithstanding, he exhorted the by-standers, if they had attained a knowledge of the truth, not to be deterred by the fear of death from confessing it. In the following month, two youths were discovered outside the town of Tournay reading the Scriptures. An intimacy of the closest kind, hallowed by their love of the Gospel, had knit them together all their lives; nor were they parted now. They were strangled and burned at the same stake.3 Considering the number and the barbarity of these executions, it does not surprise one that Orange and his associates believed that if the methods of extirpating heresy were to be changed, it could only be for milder inflictions. They had yet to learn the fertility of Philip's inventive genius. Scarcely had Egmont given in his report of his mission, when new instructions arrived from Philip, to the effect that not only were the old placards to be rigorously enforced, but, over and above, the canons of the Council of Trent were to be promulgated as law throughout the Netherlands. These canons gave the entire power of trying and punishing heretics to the clergy. In short, they delivered over the inhabitants of the Netherlands in all matters of opinion to the sole irresponsible and merciless jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Alarm, terror, and consternation overspread the Provinces. The nobles, states, and cities sent deputies to the governor to remonstrate against the outrage on their ancient rights about to be perpetrated, and the destruction into which such a policy was 2 Brandt, vol. i., p. 154. Laval, vol. iii., p. 134. 3 Brandt, vol. i., p. 153. 66 POSITION OF THE DUCHESS OF PARMA. sure to drag the country. "There could be no viler slavery," they said, "than to lead a trembling life in the midst of spies and informers, who registered every word, action, look, and even every thought which they pretended to read from thence." The four chief cities of Brabant, Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, and Bois le Duc sent deputies to the Chancellor and Council of that Province, to say plainly that the orders of Philip were sounding the death-knell of the Province; the foreign merchants were making haste to get away, the commerce of their States was hastening to extinction, and soon their now flourishing country would be a mere wilderness." The Prince of Orange wrote to the Duchess of Parma to the effect that if this business of burning, beheading, and drowning was to go on, he begged that some other might be invested with the functions with which his sovereign had clothed him, for he would be no party to the ruin of his country, which he as clearly foresaw as he was powerless to avert. Other Stadtholders wrote to the Duchess of Parma, in reply to her earnest exhortations to assist in carrying out the edicts, saying that they were not inclined to be the lifeguards of the Inquisition. One of the chief magistrates of Amsterdam, a Roman Catholic, happening one day to meet a sheriff who was very zealous in the work of persecution, thus addressed him: "You would do well, when called to appear before the tribunal of God, to have the emperor's placards in your hand, and observe how far they will bear you out." Papers were being daily scattered in the streets, and posted on the gates of the palace of Orange, and of other nobles, calling on them to come to their country's help in its hour of need, to the end that, the axe and the halter being abolished in the affairs of religion, every one might be able to live and die according to his conscience. On the other hand, the governor was besieged by remonstrances and outcries from the bishops and monks, who complained that they were withstood in carrying out their sovereign's wish in the matter of the execution of the edicts. The aid they had been encouraged to expect in the work of the extirpation of heresy was withheld from them. The tribunals, prisons, and scaffolds of the country had been made over to them, and all magistrates, constables, and gaolers had been constituted their servants; nevertheless, they were often denied the use of that machinery which was altogether indispensable if their work was to be done, not by halves, but effectually. They had to bear odium and calumny, nay, sometimes they were in danger of their lives, in their zeal for the king's service and the Church's glory. On all sides is heard the cry 39 that heresy is increasing, continued these muchinjured men; but how can it be that heretics should not multiply, they asked, when they were denied. the use of prisons in which to shut them up, and fires in which to burn them? The position of the Duchess of Parma was anything but pleasant. On the one side she was assailed by the screams and hootings of this brood of Inquisitors; and on the other was heard the muttered thunder of a nation's wrath.1 Rocked thus on the great billows, the Duchess of Parma wrote to her brother, letting him know how difficult and dangerous her position had become, and craving his advice as to how she ought to steer amid tempests so fierce, and every hour growing fiercer. Philip replied that the edicts must ever be her beacon-lights. Philip's will was unalterably fixed on the extirpation of heresy in his kingdom of the Netherlands, and that will must be the duchess's pole-star. Nevertheless, the tyrant was pleased to set his wits to work, and to devise a method by which the flagrancy, but not the cruelty, of the persecution might be abated. Instead of bringing forth the heretic, and beheading or burning him at midday, he was to be put to death in his prison at midnight. The mode of execution was as simple as it was barbarous. The head of the prisoner was tied between his knees with a rope, and he was then thrown into a large tub full of water, kept in the prison for that use. This Christian invention is said to have been the original device of the "most Catholic king." The plea which Bishop Biro of Wesprim set up in defence of the clemency of the Church of Rome, would have been more appropriate in Philip's mouth, its terms slightly altered, than it was in the mouth of the bishop. "It is a calumny to say that the Church of Rome is bloodthirsty," said the worthy prelate, Biro; "that Church has always been content if heretics were burned." A new and dreadful rumour which began to circulate through the Netherlands, added to the alarm and terrors of the nation. It was during this same summer that Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Alva held their celebrated conference at Bayonne. Soon thereafter, whispers which passed from land to land, and from mouth to mouth, reached the Low Countries, that a dark plot had been concocted between these two personages, having for its object the utter extirpation of the new opinions. These rumours corresponded with what was said to have been agreed upon at one of the last sessions of the 1 Brandt, vol. i., pp. 154, 155. Laval, vol. iii., pp. 136, 137. 1 Council of Trent, which had closed its sittings the year before, and on that account greater stress was laid on these whispers. They appeared to receive still further authentication, at least in the eyes of William, Prince of Orange, from the circumstance that a plot precisely identical had been disclosed to him six years before, by Henry II., when the king and the prince were hunting together in the Wood of Vincennes. The rest of the hunting-party had left them, Henry and William were alone, and the mind of the French king being full of the project, and deeming the prince, then the intimate friend both of Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, a safe depositary of the great secret, he unhappily for himself, but most happily for humanity, communicated to the prince the details of the plan. Henry II. told him how apprehensive he was of his throne being swept away in the flood of Protestantism, but he hoped, with the help of his son-in-law Philip II., soon to rid France of the last Huguenot. The monarch went on to explain to the prince how this was to be done, by entrapping the Protestants at the first convenient moment, destroying them at a single blow; and extending the same thorough purgation to all countries to which heresy had spread. William could not have been more astounded although the earth had suddenly yawned at his feet; however, he carried the secret in his breast from that dark wood, without permitting the French king to read, by word or look of his, the shock the disclosure had given him. And he retained it in his breast for years, without speaking of it to any one, although from the moment of his coming to the knowledge of it, it began to shape his conduct. It is from this circumstance that he received the significant name of "William the Silent." All three. -the rumours from Bayonne, the tidings from the Council of Trent, and the dark secret imparted to William in the Forest of Vincennes-pointed to a storm now gathering, of more than usual severity, and which should burst over all Christendom, in which the Netherlands could not miss having their full share. But what had been plotted at Trent among the Fathers was nearly as little known as what had been agreed on at Bayonne, between Catherine and Alva. The full truth-the definite plan-was locked up in the archives of the Vatican, whence it is probable its first suggestion had come, and in the breasts of the little coterie that met at the closing sessions of the Council. But a paper by one of the secretaries of Cardinal Boromeo, since given to the 1 Sleidan, Continuation, bk. ii., p. 27. 66 world, has published on the housetops what was then spoken in whispers in the cabinets of kings or the conclaves of ecclesiastical synods. First, in order that the business may be conducted with the greater authority, they" (the Fathers of the Council) "advise to commit the superintendence of the whole affair to Philip the Catholic king, who ought to be appointed with common consent the head and conductor of the whole enterprise." The Catholic king was to begin by preferring a complaint to his neighbour, Anthony Bourbon, King of Navarre, “ that, contrary to the institutions of his predecessors, he entertains and nourishes a new religion." Should the King of Navarre turn a deaf ear to this remonstrance, Philip was to essay him "by fair promises to draw him off from his wicked and unhappy design." He was to hold out to him the hope of having that portion of his ancestral dominions of which he had been stripped, restored, or an equivalent given him in some other part of Europe. Should Philip succeed in soothing him, "the operations of the future war will then be rendered more easy, short, and expeditious." If he still continued obstinate, the King of Spain was to "intermix some threatenings with his promises and flatteries." Meanwhile Philip was to be collecting an army privily as possible ;" and in the event of the King of Navarre continuing obdurate, the Spanish king was to fall upon him suddenly and unawares, and chase him from his kingdom, which the leaguers were to occupy. 66 as From the mountains of Navarre the war was to be moved down to the plains. The Huguenots of France were to be extirpated root and branch. For the execution of this part of the programme, the main stress was rested on the zeal of the Duke of Guise, aided by reinforcements from Spain. While the sword was busy drowning the plains of that country in Protestant blood, such of the German princes as were Roman Catholic were to stop the passes into France, lest the Protestant princes should send succour to their brethren. Shut in, and left to contend unaided with two powerful armies, the fall of French Protestantism could not be doubtful. France, chastised and restored to obedience to the Roman See, would regain her pristine purity and glory. Matters being thus "ordered in France," Germany was next to be undertaken. "Luther and his era "—that hour of portentous eclipse which had thrust itself into Germany's golden day-must be razed from the tablets and chronicles of the Fatherland, nor ever be once remembered or spoken of by the generations to come, "It will be necessary," says the document from which we quote, LEAGUE OF THE FLEMISH NOBLES. "with men collected from all quarters, to invade Germany, and with the aid of the emperor and the bishops, to render and restore it again to the Holy Apostolic See." It was arranged that this war of purgation should support itself. "The Duke of Guise shall lend to the emperor and the other princes of Germany, and the ecclesiastical lords, all the money that shall be gathered from the spoils and confiscations of so many noble, powerful, and wealthy citizens as shall be killed in France on account of the new religion, which will amount to a very great sum; the said Lord of Guise taking sufficient caution and security, that so he may, after the conclusion of the war, be reimbursed of all the money employed for that purpose, from the spoils of the Lutherans and others who shall, on account of religion, be slain in Germany." What of Helvetia while this great conflagration should be raging all round it? At the cry of their brethren the Reformed Swiss would rush from their mountains to aid their co-religionists. To prevent their doing so, work was to be found for them at home. "For fear," says the document, “that the cantons of Switzerland should lend aids, it is necessary that the cantons which continue still obedient to the Roman Church declare war against the rest, and that the Pope assist these cantons that are of his religion to the utmost of his power." 41 The branches cut off in France and Germany, a last and finishing blow was to be dealt at the root of the tree in Geneva. "The Duke of Savoy, whilst the war thus embroils France and the Swiss, shall rush suddenly and unexpectedly with all his forces upon the city of Geneva, on the lake of Leman, assault it by force, and shall not abandon it nor withdraw his men until he become master and obtain full possession of the said city, putting to the point of the sword, or casting into the lake, every living soul who shall be found therein, without any distinction of age or sex; that all may be taught that the Divine Power in the end hath compensated for the delay of the punishment by the greatness and severity of it."1 The tempest seemed about to burst in the days of Henry II., but the fatal tournament which sent that monarch to a premature grave drew off the storm for a time. It continued, however, to lower in the sky of Europe; the dark cloud would at times approach as if about to break, and again it would roll away. At last it exploded in the St. Bartholomew Massacre, and its awful reverberations were reiterated again and again in the wars of Philip II. in the Low Countries, and in the campaigns and battles which for thirty years continued to devastate Germany. League of the Flemish Nobles-Franciscus Junius-The "Confederacy "-Its Object-Number of Signatories--Meeting of the Golden Fleece and States-General-How shall Margaret Steer?-Procession of the Confederates-Their Petition-Perplexity of the Duchess-Stormy Debate in the Council-The Confederates first styled "Beggars" -Medals Struck in Commemoration of the Name-Livery of the Beggars-Answer of the Duchess-Promised Moderation of the Edicts-Martyrdoms Continued-Four Martyrs at Lille-John Cornelius Beheaded. FINDING that new and more tyrannical orders were every day arriving from Spain, and that the despot was tightening his hold upon their country, the leading nobles of the Netherlands now resolved to combine, in order to prevent, if possible, the utter enslavement of the nation. The "Compromise," as the league of the nobles was called, was formed early in the year 1566. Its first suggestion was made at a conventicle, held on the Prince of Parma's marriage-day (3rd of November, 1565), at which Franciscus Junius, the minister of the Walloon or Huguenot congregation in Antwerp, preached." This Junius, who was a Frenchman and of noble birth, had studied in Geneva, and though not more than twenty years of age, his great learning and extraordinary talents gave his counsel weight with 1 Discours des Conjurations de ceux de la Maison de Guise, contre le Roy, son Royaume, les Princes de son Sang, et ses Etats; printed in 1565, and republished at Ratisbon in 1712, among the proofs of Satyre Menipée, tom. iii. 2 So Brandt affirms, on the authority of a MS. Journal in Junius's own handwriting (vol. i., p. 162). |