This incident of the livery occupied the public attention, and inflamed the universal hatred during the later months of the minister’s residence in the country.  Meantime the three seigniors had become very impatient at receiving no answer to their letter.  Margaret of Parma was urging her brother to give them satisfaction, repeating to him their bitter complaints that their characters and conduct were the subject of constant misrepresentation to their sovereign, and picturing her own isolated condition.  She represented herself as entirely deprived of the support of those great personages, who, despite her positive assurances to the contrary, persisted in believing that they were held up to the King as conspirators, and were in danger of being punished as traitors.  Philip, on his part, was conning Granvelle’s despatches, filled with hints of conspiracy, and holding counsel with Alva, who had already recommended the taking off several heads for treason.  The Prince of Orange, who already had secret agents in the King’s household, and was supplied with copies of the most private papers in the palace, knew better than to be deceived by the smooth representations of the Regent.  Philip had, however, at last begun secretly to yield.  He asked Alva’s advice whether on the whole it would not be better to let the Cardinal leave the Netherlands, at least for a time, on pretence of visiting his mother in Burgundy, and to invite Count Egmont to Madrid, by way of striking one link from the chain, as Granvelle had suggested.  The Duke had replied that he had no doubt of the increasing insolence of the three seigniors, as depicted in the letters of the Duchess Margaret, nor of their intention to make the Cardinal their first victim; it being the regular principle in all revolts against the sovereign, to attack the chief minister in the first place.  He could not, however, persuade himself that the King should yield and Granvelle be recalled.  Nevertheless, if it were to be done at all, he preferred that the Cardinal should go to Burgundy without leave asked either of the Duchess or of Philip; and that he should then write; declining to return, on the ground that his life was not safe in the Netherlands.

After much hesitation, the monarch at last settled upon a plan, which recommended itself through the extreme duplicity by which it was marked, and the complicated system of small deceptions, which it consequently required.  The King, who was never so thoroughly happy or at home as when elaborating the ingredients of a composite falsehood, now busily employed himself in his cabinet.  He measured off in various letters to the Regent, to the three nobles, to Egmont alone, and to Granvelle, certain proportionate parts of his whole plan, which; taken separately, were intended to deceive, and did deceive nearly every person in the world, not only in his own generation, but for three centuries afterwards, but which arranged synthetically,