Prince, although horror-struck and indignant at the royal revelations, held his peace, and kept his countenance.  The King was not aware that, in opening this delicate negotiation to Alva’s colleague and Philip’s plenipotentiary, he had given a warning of inestimable value to the man who had been born to resist the machinations of Philip and of Alva.  William of Orange earned the surname of “the Silent,” from the manner in which he received these communications of Henry without revealing to the monarch, by word or look, the enormous blunder which he had committed.  His purpose was fixed from that hour.  A few days afterwards he obtained permission to visit the Netherlands, where he took measures to excite, with all his influence, the strongest and most general opposition to the continued presence of the Spanish troops, of which forces, touch against his will, he had been, in conjunction with Egmont, appointed chief.  He already felt, in his own language, that “an inquisition for the Netherlands had been, resolved upon more cruel than that of Spain; since it would need but to look askance at an image to be cast into the flames.”  Although having as yet no spark of religious sympathy for the reformers, he could not, he said, “but feel compassion for so many virtuous men and women thus devoted to massacre,” and he determined to save them if he could!’ At the departure of Philip he had received instructions, both patent and secret, for his guidance as stadholder of Holland, Friesland, and Utrecht.  He was ordered “most expressly to correct and extirpate the sects reprobated by our Holy Mother Church; to execute the edicts of his Imperial Majesty, renewed by the King, with absolute rigor.  He was to see that the judges carried out the edicts, without infraction, alteration, or moderation, since they were there to enforce, not to make or to discuss the law.”  In his secret instructions he was informed that the execution of the edicts was to be with all rigor, and without any respect of persons.  He was also reminded that, whereas some persons had imagined the severity of the law “to be only intended against Anabaptists, on the contrary, the edicts were to be enforced on Lutherans and all other sectaries without distinction.”  Moreover, in one of his last interviews with Philip, the King had given him the names of several “excellent persons suspected of the new religion,” and had commanded him to have them put to death.  This, however, he not only omitted to do, but on the contrary gave them warning, so that they might effect their escape, “thinking it more necessary to obey God than man.”