The Prince replied to this summons by a brief and somewhat contemptuous plea to the jurisdiction.  As a Knight of the Fleece, as a member of the Germanic Empire, as a sovereign prince in France, as a citizen of the Netherlands, he rejected the authority of Alva and of his self-constituted tribunal.  His innocence he was willing to establish before competent courts and righteous judges.  As a Knight of the Fleece, he said he could be tried only by his peers, the brethren of the Order, and, for that purpose, he could be summoned only by the King as Head of the Chapter, with the sanction of at least six of his fellow-knights.  In conclusion, he offered to appear before his Imperial Majesty, the Electors, and other members of the Empire, or before the Knights of the Golden Fleece.  In the latter case, he claimed the right, under the statutes of that order, to be placed while the trial was pending, not in a solitary prison, as had been the fate of Egmont and of Horn, but under the friendly charge and protection of the brethren themselves.  The letter was addressed to the procurator-general, and a duplicate was forwarded to the Duke.

From the general tenor of the document, it is obvious both that the Prince was not yet ready to throw down the gauntlet to his sovereign, nor to proclaim his adhesion to the new religion:  Of departing from the Netherlands in the spring, he had said openly that he was still in possession of sixty thousand florins yearly, and that he should commence no hostilities against Philip, so long as he did not disturb him in his honor or his estates.  Far-seeing politician, if man ever were, he knew the course whither matters were inevitably tending, but he knew how much strength was derived from putting an adversary irretrievably in the wrong.  He still maintained an attitude of dignified respect towards the monarch, while he hurled back with defiance the insolent summons of the viceroy.  Moreover, the period had not yet arrived for him to break publicly with the ancient faith.  Statesman, rather than religionist, at this epoch, he was not disposed to affect a more complete conversion than the one which he had experienced.  He was, in truth, not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience.  His mind was already expanding beyond any dogmas of the age.  The man whom his enemies stigmatized as atheist and renegade, was really in favor of toleration, and therefore, the more deeply criminal in the eyes of all religious parties.

Events, personal to himself, were rapidly to place him in a position from which he might enter the combat with honor.