might have been formed, comprising the greater part of those who had appended their signatures to the Pacification of Ghent.  It was not until some months had passed and he saw that his dreams of a larger union were not to be realised, that he signed, on May 3, the Act of Union drawn up at Utrecht.  By this time he was well aware that Parma had succeeded in winning over the malcontent nobles to accept his terms.  On May 19 the Walloon provinces, whose representatives had signed the Union of Arras, agreed to acknowledge, with certain nominal reservations, the sovereignty of Philip and to allow only Catholic worship.  In fact the reconciliation was complete.

Thus, despite the efforts of Orange, the idea of the federation of all the seventeen provinces on national lines became a thing of the past, henceforth unattainable.  The Netherlands were divided into two camps.  Gradually in the course of 1580 Overyssel, Drente and the greater part of Friesland gave in their adherence to the Union of Utrecht, and Groningen and the Ommelanden allied themselves with their neighbours.  In the rest of the Low Countries all fell away and submitted themselves to the king’s authority, except Antwerp and Breda in Brabant, and Ghent, Bruges and Ypres in Flanders.  William felt that Parma was constantly gaining ground.  Defection after defection took place, the most serious being that of George Lalaing, Count of Renneberg, the Stadholder of Groningen.  Negotiations were indeed secretly opened with William himself, and the most advantageous and flattering terms offered to him, if he would desert the patriot cause.  But with him opposition to Spain and to Spanish methods of government was a matter of principle and strong conviction.  He was proof alike against bribery and cajolery, even when he perceived, as the year 1580 succeeded 1579, that he had no staunch friends on whom he could absolutely rely, save in the devoted provinces of Holland and Zeeland.

For things had been going from bad to worse.  The excesses and cruelties committed by the Calvinists, wherever they found themselves in a position to persecute a Catholic minority, and especially the outrages perpetrated at Ghent under the leadership of two Calvinist fanatics, De Ryhove and De Hembyze, although they were done in direct opposition to the wishes and efforts of Orange, always and at all times the champion of toleration, did much to discredit him in Flanders and Brabant and to excite bitter indignation among the Catholics, who still formed the great majority of the population of the Netherlands.  William felt himself to be month by month losing power.  The action he was at last compelled to take, in rescuing Ghent from the hands of the ultra-democratic Calvinist party and in expelling De Ryhove and De Hembyze, caused him to be denounced as “a papist at heart.”  Indeed the bigots of both creeds in that age of intolerance and persecution were utterly unable to understand his attitude, and could only attribute it to a lack