In a private letter, written some weeks later (August 15), Egmont begged secretary Erasso to assure the King that their joint letter had not been dictated by passion, but by zeal for his service.  It was impossible, he said, to imagine the insolence of the Cardinal, nor to form an idea of the absolute authority which he arrogated.

In truth, Granvelle, with all his keenness, could not see that Orange, Egmont, Berghen, Montigny and the rest, were no longer pages and young captains of cavalry, while he was the politician and the statesman.  By six or seven years the senior of Egmont, and by sixteen years of Orange, he did not divest himself of the superciliousness of superior wisdom, not unjust nor so irritating when they had all been boys.  In his deportment towards them, and in the whole tone of his private correspondence with Philip, there was revealed, almost in spite of himself, an affectation of authority, against which Egmont rebelled and which the Prince was not the man to acknowledge.  Philip answered the letter of the two nobles in his usual procrastinating manner.  The Count of Horn, who was about leaving Spain (whither he had accompanied the King) for the Netherlands, would be entrusted with the resolution which he should think proper to take upon the subject suggested.  In the mean time, he assured them that he did not doubt their zeal in his service.

As to Count Horn, Granvelle had already prejudiced the King against him.  Horn and the Cardinal had never been friends.  A brother of the prelate had been an aspirant for the hand of the Admiral’s sister, and had been somewhat contemptuously rejected.  Horn, a bold, vehement, and not very good-tempered personage, had long kept no terms with Granvelle, and did not pretend a friendship which he had never felt.  Granvelle had just written to instruct the King that Horn was opposed bitterly to that measure which was nearest the King’s heart—­the new bishoprics.  He had been using strong language, according to the Cardinal, in opposition to the scheme, while still in Spain.  He therefore advised that his Majesty, concealing, of course, the source of the information, and speaking as it were out of the royal mind itself, should expostulate with the Admiral upon the subject.  Thus prompted, Philip was in no gracious humor when he received Count Horn, then about to leave Madrid for the Netherlands, and to take with him the King’s promised answer to the communication of Orange and Egmont.  His Majesty had rarely been known to exhibit so much anger towards any person as he manifested upon that occasion.  After a few words from the Admiral, in which he expressed his sympathy with the other Netherland nobles, and his aversion to Granvelle, in general terms, and in reply to Philip’s interrogatories, the King fiercely interrupted him:  “What! miserable man!” he vociferated, “you all complain of this Cardinal, and always in vague language.  Not one of you, in spite of all my questions, can give me a single reason for your dissatisfaction.”  With this the royal wrath boiled over in such unequivocal terms that the Admiral changed color, and was so confused with indignation and astonishment, that he was scarcely able to find his way out of the room.