This act was accomplished with the deliberation due to its gravity.  At the same time it left the country in a very divided condition.  This was inevitable.  The Prince had done all that one man could do to hold the Netherlands together and unite them perpetually into one body politic, and perhaps, if he had been inspired by a keener personal ambition, this task might have been accomplished.—­The seventeen provinces might have accepted his dominion, but they would agree to that of no other sovereign.  Providence had not decreed that the country, after its long agony, should give birth to a single and perfect commonwealth.  The Walloon provinces had already fallen off from the cause, notwithstanding the entreaties of the Prince.  The other Netherlands, after long and tedious negotiation with Anjou, had at last consented to his supremacy, but from this arrangement Holland and Zealand held themselves aloof.  By a somewhat anomalous proceeding, they sent deputies along with those of the other provinces, to the conferences with the Duke, but it was expressly understood that they would never accept him as sovereign.  They were willing to contract with him and with their sister provinces—­ over which he was soon to exercise authority—­a firm and perpetual league, but as to their own chief, their hearts were fixed.  The Prince of Orange should be their lord and master, and none other.  It lay only in his self-denying character that he had not been clothed with this dignity long before.  He had, however, persisted in the hope that all the provinces might be brought to acknowledge the Duke of Anjou as their sovereign, under conditions which constituted a free commonwealth with an hereditary chief, and in this hope he had constantly refused concession to the wishes of the northern provinces.  He in reality exercised sovereign power over nearly the whole population, of the Netherlands.  Already in 1580, at the assembly held in April, the states of Holland had formally requested him to assume the full sovereignty over them, with the title of Count of Holland and Zealand forfeited by Philip.  He had not consented, and the proceedings had been kept comparatively secret.  As the negotiations with Anjou advanced, and as the corresponding abjuration of Philip was more decisively indicated, the consent of the Prince to this request was more warmly urged.  As it was evident that the provinces thus bent upon placing him at their head, could by no possibility be induced to accept the sovereignty of Anjou—­as, moreover; the act of renunciation of Philip could no longer be deferred, the Prince of Orange reluctantly and provisionally accepted the supreme power over Holland and Zealand.  This arrangement was finally accomplished upon the 24th of July, 1581, and the act of abjuration took place two days afterwards.  The offer of the sovereignty over the other united provinces had been accepted by Anjou six months before.