and interchanged vows to protect each other and the cause of the oppressed provinces.  Meanwhile the privy council, to which body the Duchess had referred the recent despatches from Madrid, made a report upon the whole subject to the state council, during the month of November, sustaining the royal views, and insisting upon the necessity of carrying them into effect.  The edicts and inquisition having been so vigorously insisted upon by the King, nothing was to be done but to issue new proclamations throughout the country, together with orders to bishops, councils, governors and judges, that every care should be taken to enforce them to the full.

This report came before the state council, and was sustained by some of its members.  The Prince of Orange expressed the same uncompromising hostility to the inquisition which he had always manifested, but observed that the commands of the King were so precise and absolute, as to leave no possibility of discussing that point.  There was nothing to be done, he said, but to obey, but he washed his hands of the fatal consequences which he foresaw.  There was no longer any middle course between obedience and rebellion.  This opinion, the soundness of which could scarcely be disputed, was also sustained by Egmont and Horn.

Viglius, on the contrary, nervous, agitated, appalled, was now disposed to temporize.  He observed that if the seigniors feared such evil results, it would be better to prevent, rather than to accelerate the danger which would follow the proposed notification to the governors and municipal authorities throughout the country, on the subject of the inquisition.  To make haste, was neither to fulfil the intentions nor to serve the interests of the King, and it was desirable “to avoid emotion and scandal.”  Upon these heads the President made a very long speech, avowing, in conclusion, that if his Majesty should not find the course proposed agreeable, he was ready to receive all the indignation upon his own head.

Certainly, this position of the President was somewhat inconsistent with his previous course.  He had been most violent in his denunciations of all who should interfere with the execution of the great edict of which he had been the original draughtsman.  He had recently been ferocious in combating the opinion of those civilians in the assembly of doctors who had advocated the abolition of the death penalty against heresy.  He had expressed with great energy his private opinion that the ancient religion would perish if the machinery of persecution were taken away; yet he now for the first time seemed to hear or to heed the outcry of a whole nation, and to tremble at the sound.  Now that the die had been cast, in accordance with the counsels of his whole life, now that the royal commands, often enigmatical and hesitating; were at last too distinct to be misconstrued, and too peremptory to be tampered with—­the president imagined the possibility of delay.  The health of the ancient