The loyalty of the elder Mansfeld was beyond dispute even by Alva.  His son Charles had, however, been imprudent, and, as we have seen, had even affixed his name to the earliest copies of the Compromise.  He had retired, it is true, from all connexion with the confederates, but his father knew well that the young Count’s signature upon that famous document would prove his death-warrant, were he found in the country.  He therefore had sent him into Germany before the arrival of the Duke.

The King’s satisfaction was unbounded when he learned this important achievement of Alva, and he wrote immediately to express his approbation in the most extravagant terms.  Cardinal Granvelle, on the contrary, affected astonishment at a course which he had secretly counselled.  He assured his Majesty that he had never believed Egmont to entertain sentiments opposed to the Catholic religion, nor to the interests of the Crown, up to the period of his own departure from the Netherlands.  He was persuaded, he said, that the Count had been abused by others, although, to be sure, the Cardinal had learned with regret what Egmont had written on the occasion of the baptism of Count Hoogstraaten’s child.  As to the other persons arrested, he said that no one regretted their fate.  The Cardinal added, that he was supposed to be himself the instigator of these captures, but that he was not disturbed by that, or by other imputations of a similar nature.

In conversation with those about him, he frequently expressed regret that the Prince of Orange had been too crafty to be caught in the same net in which his more simple companions were so inextricably entangled.  Indeed, on the first arrival of the news, that men of high rank had been arrested in Brussels, the Cardinal eagerly inquired if the Taciturn had been taken, for by that term he always characterized the Prince.  Receiving a negative reply, he expressed extreme disappointment, adding, that if Orange had escaped, they had taken nobody; and that his capture would have been more valuable than that of every man in the Netherlands.

Peter Titelmann, too, the famous inquisitor, who, retired from active life, was then living upon Philip’s bounty, and encouraged by friendly letters from that monarch, expressed the same opinion.  Having been informed that Egmont and Horn had been captured, he eagerly inquired if “wise William” had also been taken.  He was, of course, answered in the negative.  “Then will our joy be but brief,” he observed.  “Woe unto us for the wrath to come from Germany.”

On the 12th of July, of this year, Philip wrote to Granvelle to inquire the particulars of a letter which the Prince of Orange, according to a previous communication of the Cardinal, had written to Egmont on the occasion of the baptism of Count Hoogstraaten’s child.  On the 17th of August, the Cardinal replied, by setting the King right as to the error which he had committed.  The letter, as he had already stated, was not written