It was difficult, however, with all the Bishop’s eloquence and dexterity, to construct an agreeable inquisition.  The people did not like it, in any shape, and there were indications, not to be mistaken, that one day there would be a storm which it would be beyond human power to assuage.  At present the people directed their indignation only upon a part of the machinery devised for their oppression.  The Spanish troops were considered as a portion of the apparatus by which the new bishoprics and the edicts were to be forced into execution.  Moreover, men were, weary of the insolence and the pillage which these mercenaries had so long exercised in the land.  When the King had been first requested to withdraw them, we have seen that he had burst into a violent passion.  He had afterward dissembled.  Promising, at last, that they should all be sent from the country within three or four months after his departure, he had determined to use every artifice to detain them in the provinces.  He had succeeded, by various subterfuges, in keeping them there fourteen months; but it was at last evident that their presence would no longer be tolerated.  Towards the close of 1560 they were quartered in Walcheren and Brill.  The Zelanders, however, had become so exasperated by their presence that they resolutely refused to lay a single hand upon the dykes, which, as usual at that season, required great repairs.  Rather than see their native soil profaned any longer by these hated foreign mercenaries, they would see it sunk forever in the ocean.  They swore to perish-men, women, and children together-in the waves, rather than endure longer the outrages which the soldiery daily inflicted.  Such was the temper of the Zelanders that it was not thought wise to trifle with their irritation.  The Bishop felt that it was no longer practicable to detain the troops, and that all the pretext devised by Philip and his government had become ineffectual.  In a session of the State Council, held on the 25th October, 1560, he represented in the strongest terms to the Regent the necessity for the final departure of the troops.  Viglius, who knew the character of his countrymen, strenuously seconded the proposal.  Orange briefly but firmly expressed the same opinion, declining any longer to serve as commander of the legion, an office which, in conjunction with Egmont, he had accepted provisionally, with the best of motives, and on the pledge of Philip that the soldiers should be withdrawn.  The Duchess urged that the order should at least be deferred until the arrival of Count Egmont, then in Spain, but the proposition was unanimously negatived.