he employed that most merciless Spaniard Don Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo, Duke of Alva, followed with a powerful army of strange nations:  by whom he first slaughtered that renowned captain, the Earl of Egmont, Prince of Gavare:  and Philip Montmorency, Earl of Horn:  made away Montigue, and the Marquis of Bergues, and cut off in those six years (that Alva governed) of gentlemen and others, eighteen thousand and six hundred, by the hands of the hangman, besides all his other barbarous murders and massacres.  By whose ministry when he could not yet bring his affairs to their wished ends, having it in his hope to work that by subtility, which he had failed to perform by force; he sent for governor his bastard brother Don John of Austria, a prince of great hope, and very gracious to those people.  But he, using the same papal advantage that his predecessors had done, made no scruple to take oath upon the Holy Evangelists, to observe the treaty made with the General States; and to discharge the Low Countries of all Spaniards, and other strangers therein garrisoned:  towards whose pay and passport, the Netherlands strained themselves to make payment of six hundred thousand pounds.  Which monies received, he suddenly surprised the citadels of Antwerp and Nemours:  not doubting (being unsuspected by the states) to have possessed himself of all the mastering places of those provinces.  For whatsoever he overtly pretended, he held in secret a contrary counsel with the Secretary Escovedo, Rhodus, Barlemont, and others, ministers of the Spanish tyranny, formerly practised, and now again intended.  But let us now see the effect and end of this perjury and of all other the Duke’s cruelties.  First, for himself, after he had murdered so many of the nobility; executed (as aforesaid) eighteen thousand and six hundred in six years, and most cruelly slain man, woman, and child, in Mechlin, Zutphen, Naerden, and other places:  notwithstanding his Spanish vaunt, that he would suffocate the Hollanders in their own butter-barrels, and milk-tubs; he departed the country no otherwise accompanied, than with the curse and detestation of the whole nation; leaving his master’s affairs in a tenfold worse estate, than he found them at his first arrival.  For Don John, whose haughty conceit of himself overcame the greatest difficulties; though his judgment were over-weak to manage the least:  what wonders did his fearful breach of faith bring forth, other than the King his brother’s jealousy and distrust, with the untimely death that seized him, even in the flower of his youth?  And for Escovedo his sharp-witted secretary, who in his own imagination had conquered for his master both England and the Netherlands; being sent into Spain upon some new project, he was at the first arrival, and before any access to the King, by certain ruffians appointed by Anthony Peres (though by better warrant than his) rudely murdered in his own lodging.  Lastly, if we consider the King of Spain’s carriage, his