Amsterdam to remain in this isolated and hostile attitude to the rest of Holland.  The Prince, having promised to use no coercion, and loyally adhering to his pledge, had only with extreme difficulty restrained the violence of the Hollanders and Zealanders, who were determined, by fair means or foul, to restore the capital city to its natural place within his stadholderate.  He had been obliged, on various occasions, particularly on the 21st of October of the preceding year, to address a most decided and peremptory letter to the estates of Holland and Zealand, forbidding the employment of hostile measures against Amsterdam.  His commands had been reluctantly, partially, and only temporarily obeyed.  The states desisted from their scheme of reducing the city by famine, but they did not the less encourage the secret and unofficial expeditions which were daily set on foot to accomplish the annexation by a sudden enterprise.

Late in November, a desperate attempt had been made by Colonel Helling, in conjunction with Governor Sonoy, to carry the city by surprise.  The force which the adventurer collected for the purpose was inadequate, and his plans were unskilfully arranged.  He was himself slain in the streets, at the very commencement of the action; whereupon, in the quaint language of the contemporary chronicler, “the hearts of his soldiers sank in their shoes,” and they evacuated the city with much greater rapidity than they had entered it.  The Prince was indignant at these violent measures, which retarded rather than advanced the desired consummation.  At the same time it was an evil of immense magnitude—­this anomalous condition of his capital.  Ceaseless schemes were concerted by the municipal and clerical conspirators within its walls, and various attempts were known, at different times, to have been contemplated by Don John, to inflict a home-thrust upon the provinces of Holland and Zealand at the most vulnerable and vital point.  The “Satisfaction” accepted by Utrecht, in the autumn of 1577, had, however, paved the way for the recovery of Amsterdam; so that upon February the 8th, 1578, certain deputies from Utrecht succeeded at last in arranging terms, which were accepted by the sister city.  The basis of the treaty was, as usual, the nominal supremacy of the Catholic religion, with toleration for the Reformed worship.  The necessary effect would be, as in Harlem, Utrecht, and other places, to establish the new religion upon an entire equality with the old.  It was arranged that no congregations were to be disturbed in their religious exercises in the places respectively assigned to them.  Those of the Reformed faith were to celebrate their worship without the walls.  They were, however, to enjoy the right of burying their dead within these precincts, and it is singular how much importance was attached at that day to a custom, at which the common sentiment and the common sense of modern times revolt.  “To bury our dead