the application of the word Gueux, in its political sense, as common to all the inhabitants of the Netherlands who embraced the cause of the Reformation and took up arms against their tyrant.  Having presented two subsequent remonstrances to the stadtholderess, and obtained some consoling promises of moderation, the chief confederates quitted Brussels, leaving several directors to sustain their cause in the capital; while they themselves spread into the various provinces, exciting the people to join the legal and constitutional resistance with which they were resolved to oppose the march of bigotry and despotism.

A new form of edict was now decided on by the stadtholderess and her council; and after various insidious and illegal but successful tricks, the consent of several of the provinces was obtained to the adoption of measures that, under a guise of comparative moderation, were little less abominable than those commanded by the king.  These were formally signed by the council, and despatched to Spain to receive Philip’s sanction, and thus acquire the force of law.  The embassy to Madrid was confided to the marquis of Bergen and the baron de Montigny; the latter of whom was brother to Count Horn, and had formerly been employed on a like mission.  Montigny appears to have had some qualms of apprehension in undertaking this new office.  His good genius seemed for a while to stand between him and the fate which awaited him.  An accident which happened to his colleague allowed an excuse for retarding his journey.  But the stadtholderess urged him away:  he set out, and reached his destination; not to defend the cause of his country at the foot of the throne, but to perish a victim to his patriotism.

The situation of the patriot lords was at this crisis peculiarly embarrassing.  The conduct of the confederates was so essentially tantamount to open rebellion, that the Prince of Orange and his friends found it almost impossible to preserve a neutrality between the court and the people.  All their wishes urged them to join at once in the public cause; but they were restrained by a lingering sense of loyalty to the king, whose employments they still held, and whose confidence they were, therefore, nominally supposed to share.  They seemed reduced to the necessity of coming to an explanation, and, perhaps, a premature rupture with the government; of joining in the harsh measures it was likely to adopt against those with whose proceedings they sympathized; or, as a last alternative, to withdraw, as they had done before, wholly from all interference in public affairs.  Still their presence in the council of state was, even though their influence had greatly decreased, of vast service to the patriots, in checking the hostility of the court; and the confederates, on the other hand, were restrained from acts of open violence, by fear of the disapprobation of these their best and most powerful friends.  Be their individual motives of reasoning what they might, they at length adopted the alternative above alluded to, and resigned their places.  Count Horn retired to his estates; Count Egmont repaired to Aix-la-Chapelle, under the pretext of being ordered thither by his physicians; the Prince of Orange remained for a while at Brussels.