During the course of this same year, the Prince of Orange had been continuing his preparations.  He had sent his agents to every place where a hope was held out to him of obtaining support.  Money was what he was naturally most anxious to obtain from individuals; open and warlike assistance what he demanded from governments.  His funds, little by little, were increasing, owing to the generosity of many obscure persons, and to the daring exploits of the beggars of the sea.  His mission, however, to the northern courts had failed.  His envoys had been received in Sweden and Denmark with barren courtesy.  The Duke of Alva, on the other hand, never alluded to the Prince but with contempt; knowing not that the ruined outlaw was slowly undermining the very ground beneath the monarch’s feet; dreaming not that the feeble strokes which he despised were the opening blows of a century’s conflict; foreseeing not that long before its close the chastised province was to expand into a great republic, and that the name of the outlaw was to become almost divine.

Granvelle had already recommended that the young Count de Buren should be endowed with certain lands in Spain, in exchange for his hereditary estates, in order that the name and fame of the rebel William should be forever extinguished in the Netherlands.  With the same view, a new sentence against the Prince of Orange was now proposed by the Viceroy.  This was, to execute him solemnly in effigy, to drag his escutcheon through the streets at the tails of horses, and after having broken it in pieces, and thus cancelled his armorial bearings, to declare him and his descendants, ignoble, infamous, and incapable of holding property or estates.  Could a leaf or two of future history have been unrolled to King, Cardinal, and Governor, they might have found the destined fortune of the illustrious rebel’s house not exactly in accordance with the plan of summary extinction thus laid down.

Not discouraged, the Prince continued to send his emissaries in every direction.  Diedrich Sonoy, his most trustworthy agent, who had been chief of the legation to the Northern Courts, was now actively canvassing the governments and peoples of, Germany with the same object.  Several remarkable papers from the hand of Orange were used upon this service.  A letter, drawn up and signed by his own hand, recited; in brief and striking language, the history of his campaign in 1568, and of his subsequent efforts in the sacred cause.  It was now necessary, he said, that others besides himself should partake of his sacrifices.  This he stated plainly and eloquently.  The document was in truth a letter asking arms for liberty.  “For although all things,” said the Prince, “are in the hand of God, and although he has created all things out of nought, yet hath he granted to different men different means, whereby, as with various instruments, he accomplishes his, almighty purposes.  Thereto hath he endowed some with strength