a correspondence with the prince of Parma, offering to deliver up both Ghent and Termonde.  An attempt was consequently made by the Spaniards to surprise the former town; but the citizens were prepared for this, having intercepted some of the letters of Hembyse; and the traitor was seized, tried, condemned, and executed on the 4th of August, 1584.  He was upward of seventy years of age.  Ryhove, his celebrated colleague, died in Holland some years later.

But the fate of so insignificant a person as Hembyse passed almost unnoticed, in the agitation caused by an event which shortly preceded his death.

From the moment of their abandonment by the duke of Anjou, the United Provinces considered themselves independent; and although they consented to renew his authority over the country at large, at the solicitation of the Prince of Orange, they were resolved to confirm the influence of the latter over their particular interests, which they were now sensible could acquire stability only by that means.  The death of Anjou left them without a sovereign; and they did not hesitate in the choice which they were now called upon to make.  On whom, indeed, could they fix but William of Nassau, without the utmost injustice to him, and the deepest injury to themselves?  To whom could they turn, in preference to him who had given consistency to the early explosion of their despair; to him who first gave the country political existence, then nursed it into freedom, and now beheld it in the vigor and prime of independence?  He had seen the necessity, but certainly overrated the value, of foreign support, to enable the new state to cope with the tremendous tyranny from which it had broken.  He had tried successively Germany, England and France.  From the first and the last of these powers he had received two governors, to whom he cheerfully resigned the title.  The incapacity of both, and the treachery of the latter, proved to the states that their only chance for safety was in the consolidation of William’s authority; and they contemplated the noblest reward which a grateful nation could bestow on a glorious liberator.  And is it to be believed that he who for twenty years had sacrificed his repose, lavished his fortune, and risked his life, for the public cause, now aimed at absolute dominion, or coveted a despotism which all his actions prove him to have abhorred?  Defeated bigotry has put forward such vapid accusations.  He has been also held responsible for the early cruelties which, it is notorious, he used every means to avert, and frequently punished.  But while these revolting acts can only be viewed in the light of reprisals against the bloodiest persecution that ever existed, by exasperated men driven to vengeance by a bad example, not one single act of cruelty or bad faith has ever been made good against William, who may be safely pronounced one of the wisest and best men that history has held up as examples to the species.