Of these subordinate councillors, two had the right of voting, subject, however, in all cases to his final decision, while the rest of the number did not vote at all.  It had not, therefore, in any sense, the character of a judicial, legislative, or executive tribunal, but was purely a board of advice by which the bloody labors of the duke were occasionally lightened as to detail, while not a feather’s weight of power or of responsibility was removed from his shoulders.  He reserved for himself the final decision upon all causes which should come before the council, and stated his motives for so doing with grim simplicity.  “Two reasons,” he wrote to the King, “have determined me thus to limit the power of the tribunal; the first that, not knowing its members, I might be easily deceived by them; the second, that the men of law only condemn for crimes which are proved; whereas your Majesty knows that affairs of state are governed by very different rules from the laws which they have here.”

It being, therefore, the object of the Duke to compose a body of men who would be of assistance to him in condemning for crimes which could not be proved, and in slipping over statutes which were not to be recognized, it must be confessed that he was not unfortunate in the appointments which he made to the office of councillors.  In this task of appointment he had the assistance of the experienced Viglius.  That learned jurisconsult, with characteristic lubricity, had evaded the dangerous honor for himself, but he nominated a number of persons from whom the Duke selected his list.  The sacerdotal robes which he had so recently and so “craftily” assumed, furnished his own excuse, and in his letters to his faithful Hopper he repeatedly congratulated himself upon his success in keeping himself at a distance from so bloody and perilous a post.

It is impossible to look at the conduct of the distinguished Frisian at this important juncture without contempt.  Bent only upon saving himself, his property, and his reputation, he did not hesitate to bend before the “most illustrious Duke,” as he always denominated him, with fulsome and fawning homage.  While he declined to dip his own fingers in the innocent blood which was about to flow in torrents, he did not object to officiate at the initiatory preliminaries of the great Netherland holocaust.  His decent and dainty demeanor seems even more offensive than the jocularity of the real murderers.  Conscious that no man knew the laws and customs of the Netherlands better than himself, he had the humble effrontery to observe that it was necessary for him at that moment silently to submit his own unskilfulness to the superior judgment and knowledge of others.  Having at last been relieved from the stone of Sisyphus, which, as he plaintively expressed himself, he had been rolling for twenty years; having, by the arrival of Tisnacq, obtained his discharge as President of the state council, he was yet not unwilling to retain the emoluments and