Prince should have been allowed to take an inheritance which the will of Rene de Nassau most unequivocally conferred, and which no living creature disputed.  Yet, because some of the crown lawyers had propounded the dogma that “the son Of a heretic ought not to succeed,” it was gravely stated as an immense act of clemency upon the part of Charles the Fifth that he had not confiscated the whole of the young Prince’s heritage.  In return Granvelle’s brother Jerome had obtained the governorship of the youth, upon whose majority he had received an honorable military appointment from his attached pupil.  The prelate had afterwards recommended the marriage with the Count de Buren’s heiress, and had used his influence with the Emperor to overcome certain objections entertained by Charles, that the Prince, by this great accession of wealth, might be growing too powerful.  On the other hand, there were always many poor relations and dependents of Granvelle, eager to be benefitted by Orange’s patronage, who lived in the Prince’s household, or received handsome appointments from his generosity.  Thus, there had been great intimacy, founded upon various benefits mutually conferred; for it could hardly be asserted that the debt of friendship was wholly upon one side.

When Orange arrived in Brussels from a journey, he would go to the bishop’s before alighting at his own house.  When the churchman visited the Prince, he entered his bed-chamber without ceremony before he had risen; for it was William’s custom, through life, to receive intimate acquaintances, and even to attend to important negotiations of state, while still in bed.

The show of this intimacy had lasted longer than its substance.  Granvelle was the most politic of men, and the Prince had not served his apprenticeship at the court of Charles the Fifth to lay himself bare prematurely to the criticism or the animosity of the Cardinal with the recklessness of Horn and Egmont.  An explosion came at last, however, and very soon after an exceedingly amicable correspondence between the two upon the subject of an edict of religious amnesty which Orange was preparing for his principality, and which Granvelle had recommended him not to make too lenient.  A few weeks after this, the Antwerp magistracy was to be renewed.  The Prince, as hereditary burgrave of that city, was entitled to a large share of the appointing power in these political arrangements, which at the moment were of great importance.  The citizens of Antwerp were in a state of excitement on the subject of the new bishops.  They openly, and in the event, successfully resisted the installation of the new prelate for whom their city had been constituted a diocese.  The Prince was known to be opposed to the measure, and to the whole system of ecclesiastical persecution.  When the nominations for the new magistracy came before the Regent, she disposed of the whole matter in the secret consulta, without the knowledge, and in a manner opposed to the views of