in religious matters.  The aid of the Lutheran princes of Germany, who detested the doctrines of Geneva, could hardly be relied upon for the Netherlanders, unless they would adapt the Confession of Augsburg.  The Prince knew that the Emperor, although inclined to the Reformation, was bitterly averse to Calvinism, and he was, therefore, desirous of healing the schism which existed in the general Reformed Church.  To accomplish this, however, would be to gain a greater victory over the bigotry which was the prevailing characteristic of the age than perhaps could be expected.  The Prince, from the first moment of his abandoning the ancient doctrines, was disposed to make the attempt.

The Duchess ordered the magistrates of Antwerp to put down these mass-meetings by means of the guild-militia.  They replied that at an earlier day such a course might have been practicable, but that the sects had become quite too numerous for coercion.  If the authorities were able to prevent the exercises of the Reformed religion within the city, it would be as successful a result as could be expected.  To prevent the preaching outside the walls, by means of the bourgher force, was an utter impossibility.  The dilatoriness of the Sovereign placed the Regent in a frightful dilemma, but it was sufficiently obvious that the struggle could not long be deferred.  “There will soon be a hard nut to crack,” wrote Count Louis.  “The King will never grant the preaching; the people will never give it up, if it cost them their necks.  There’s a hard puff coming upon the country before long.”  The Duchess was not yet authorized to levy troops, and she feared that if she commenced such operations, she should perhaps offend the King, while she at the same time might provoke the people into more effective military preparations than her own.  She felt that for one company levied by her, the sectaries could raise ten.  Moreover, she was entirely without money, even if she should otherwise think it expedient to enrol an army.  Meantime she did what she could with “public prayers, processions, fasts, sermons, exhortations,” and other ecclesiastical machinery which she ordered the bishops to put in motion.  Her situation was indeed sufficiently alarming.

Egmont, whom many of the sectaries hoped to secure as their leader in case of a civil war, showed no disposition to encourage such hopes, but as little to take up arms against the people.  He went to Flanders, where the armed assemblages for field-preaching had become so numerous that a force of thirty or forty thousand men might be set on foot almost at a moment’s warning, and where the conservatives, in a state of alarm, desired the presence of their renowned governor.  The people of Antwerp, on their part, demanded William of Orange.  The Prince, who was hereditary burgrave of the city, had at first declined the invitation of the magistracy.  The Duchess united her request with the universal prayer of the inhabitants.