Saint Aldegonde complained that the Prince would not persecute the Anabaptists, Peter Dathenus denounced him as an atheist, while even Count John; the only one left of his valiant and generous brothers, opposed the religious peace—­except where the advantage was on the side of the new religion.  Where the Catholics had been effectually put down, as in Holland and Zealand, honest John saw so reason for allowing them to lift themselves up again.  In the Popish provinces, on the other hand, he was for a religious peace.  In this bigoted spirit he was followed by too many of the Reforming mass, while, on their part, the Walloons were already banding themselves together in the more southern provinces, under the name of Malcontents.  Stigmatized by the Calvinists as “Paternoster Jacks,” they were daily drawing closer their alliance with Alencon; and weakening the bands which united them with their Protestant brethren.  Count John had at length become a permanent functionary in the Netherlands.  Urgently solicited by the leaders and the great multitude of the Reformers, he had long been unwilling to abandon his home, and to neglect the private affairs which his devotion to the Netherland cause had thrown into great confusion.  The Landgrave, too, whose advice he had asked, had strongly urged him not to “dip his fingers into the olla podrida.”  The future of the provinces was, in his opinion, so big with disaster, that the past, with all its horrors; under Alva and Requesens, had only furnished the “preludia” of that which was to ensue.  For these desperate views his main reason, as usual, was the comet; that mischievous luminary still continuing to cast a lurid glare across the Landgrave’s path.  Notwithstanding these direful warnings from a prince of the Reformation, notwithstanding the “olla podrida” and the “comet,” Count John had nevertheless accepted the office of Governor of Gelderland, to which he had been elected by the estates of that province on the 11th of March.  That important bulwark of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht on the one side, and of Groningen and Friesland on the other—­the main buttress, in short, of the nascent republic, was now in hands which would defend it to the last.

As soon as the discussion came up in the states-general on the subject of the Dort petitions, Orange requested that every member who had formed his opinions should express them fully and frankly.  All wished, however, to be guided and governed by the sentiments of the Prince.  Not a man spoke, save to demand their leader’s views, and to express adhesion in advance to the course which his wisdom might suggest.  The result was a projected convention, a draft for a religious peace, which, if definitely established, would have healed many wounds and averted much calamity.  It was not, however, destined to be accepted at that time by the states of the different provinces where it was brought up for discussion; and several changes were made, both of form and substance, before the system