With regard to the more difficult requests addressed to him in the memorial, he professed generally his intention to execute the treaty of Ghent.  He observed, however, that the point of permitting the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion in Holland and Zealand regarded principally the estates of these provinces, which had contracted for no innovation in this matter, at least till the assembling of the states -general.  He therefore suggested that he neither could, nor ought to, permit any innovation, without the knowledge and consent of those estates.  As to promising by authentic act, that neither he nor the two provinces would suffer the exercise of the Catholic religion to be in any wise impugned in the rest of the Netherlands, the Prince expressed himself content to promise that, according to the said Ghent Pacification, they would suffer no attempt to be made against the public repose or against the Catholic worship.  He added that, as he had no intention of usurping any superiority over the states-general assembled at Brussels, he was content to leave the settlement of this point to their free-will and wisdom, engaging himself neither to offer nor permit any hindrance to their operations.

With this answer the deputies are said to have been well pleased.  If they were so, it must be confessed that they were thankful for small favors.  They had asked to have the Catholic religion introduced into Holland and Zealand.  The Prince had simply referred them to the estates of these provinces.  They had asked him to guarantee that the exercise of the Reformed religion should not be “procured” in the rest of the country.  He had merely promised that the Catholic worship should not be prevented.  The difference between the terms of the request and the reply was sufficiently wide.

The consent to his journey was with difficulty accorded by the estates of Holland and Zealand, and his wife, with many tears and anxious forebodings, beheld him depart for a capital where the heads of his brave and powerful friends had fallen, and where still lurked so many of his deadly foes.  During his absence, prayers were offered daily for his safety in all the churches of Holland and Zealand, by command of the estates.

He arrived at Antwerp on the 17th of September, and was received with extraordinary enthusiasm.  The Prince, who had gone forth alone, without even a bodyguard, had the whole population of the great city for his buckler.  Here he spent five days, observing, with many a sigh, the melancholy changes which had taken place in the long interval of his absence.  The recent traces of the horrible “Fury,” the blackened walls of the Hotel de Ville, the prostrate ruins of the marble streets, which he had known as the most imposing in Europe, could be hardly atoned for in his eyes even by the more grateful spectacle of the dismantled fortress.