And now again the scene was changed.  The son of the Emperor, the King’s brother, was virtually beleaguered; the proscribed rebel had arrived at victory through a long series of defeats.  The nation everywhere acknowledged him master, and was in undisguised revolt against the anointed sovereign.  The great nobles, who hated Philip on the one hand, and the Reformed religion on the other, were obliged, in obedience to the dictates of a people with whom they had little sympathy, to accept the ascendency of the Calvinist Prince, of whom they were profoundly jealous.  Even the fleeting and incapable Aerschot was obliged to simulate adhesion; even the brave Champagny, cordial hater of Spaniards, but most devotedly Catholic, “the chiefest man of wysedome and stomach at that tyme in Brussels,” so envoy Wilson wrote to Burghley, had become “Brabantized,” as his brother Granvelle expressed himself, and was one of the commissioners to invite the great rebel to Brussels.  The other envoys were the Abbot of Saint Gertrude, Dr. Leoninus, and the Seigneur de Liesvelt.  These gentlemen, on arriving at Gertruydenberg, presented a brief but very important memorial to the Prince.  In that document they informed him that the states-general, knowing how efficacious would be his presence, by reason of his singular prudence, experience, and love for the welfare and repose of the country, had unanimously united in a supplication that he would incontinently transport himself to the city of Brussels, there to advise with them concerning the necessities of the land; but, as the principal calumny employed by their adversaries was that all the provinces and leading personages intended to change both sovereign and religion, at the instigation of his Excellency, it was desirable to disprove such fictions.  They therefore very earnestly requested the Prince to make some contrary demonstration, by which it might be manifest to all that his Excellency, together with the estates of Holland and Zealand, intended faithfully to keep what they had promised.  They prayed, therefore, that the Prince, permitting the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion in the places which had recently accepted his authority, would also allow its exercise in Holland and Zealand.  They begged, further, that he would promise by a new and authentic act, that the provinces of Holland and Zealand, would not suffer the said exercise to be impugned, or any new worship to be introduced, in the other provinces of the Netherlands.

This letter might almost be regarded as a trap, set by the Catholic nobles.  Certainly the Ghent Pacification forbade the Reformed religion in form, and as certainly, winked at its exercise in fact.  The proof was, that the new worship was spreading everywhere, that the exiles for conscience’ sake were returning in swarms, and that the synod of the Reformed churches, lately held at Dort, had been, publicly attended by the ministers and deacons of numerous dissenting churches established in many different, places throughout all the provinces.  The pressure of the edicts, the horror of the inquisition being removed, the down-trodden religion had sprung from the earth more freshly than ever.