The Duchess also requested the advice of the meeting—­whether it would not be best for her to retire to some other city, like Mons, which she had selected as her stronghold in case of extremity.  The decision was that it would be a high-handed proceeding to refuse the right of petition to a body of gentlemen, many of them related to the greatest nobles in the land; but it was resolved that they should be required to make their appearance without arms.  As to the contemplated flight of the Duchess, it was urged, with much reason, that such a step would cast disgrace upon the government, and that it would be a sufficiently precautionary measure to strengthen the guards at the city gates—­not to prevent the entrance of the petitioners, but to see that they were unaccompanied by an armed force.  It had been decided that Count Brederode should present the petition to the Duchess at the head of a deputation of about three hundred gentlemen.  The character of the nobleman thus placed foremost on such an important occasion has been sufficiently made manifest.  He had no qualities whatever but birth and audacity to recommend him as a leader for a political party.  It was to be seen that other attributes were necessary to make a man useful in such a position, and the Count’s deficiencies soon became lamentably conspicuous.  He was the lineal descendant and representative of the old Sovereign Counts of Holland.  Five hundred years before his birth; his ancestor Sikko, younger brother of Dirk the Third, had died, leaving two sons, one of whom was the first Baron of Brederode.  A descent of five centuries in unbroken male succession from the original sovereigns of Holland, gave him a better genealogical claim to the provinces than any which Philip of Spain could assert through the usurping house of Burgundy.  In the approaching tumults he hoped for an opportunity of again asserting the ancient honors of his name.  He was a sworn foe to Spaniards and to “water of the fountain.”  But a short time previously to this epoch he had written to Louis of Nassau, then lying ill of a fever, in order gravely to remonstrate with him on the necessity of substituting wine for water on all occasions, and it will be seen in the sequel that the wine-cup was the great instrument on which he relied for effecting the deliverance of the country.  Although “neither bachelor nor chancellor,” as he expressed it, he was supposed to be endowed with ready eloquence and mother wit.  Even these gifts, however, if he possessed them, were often found wanting on important emergencies.  Of his courage there was no question, but he was not destined to the death either of a warrior or a martyr.  Headlong, noisy, debauched, but brave, kind-hearted and generous, he was a fitting representative of his ancestors, the hard-fighting, hard-drinking, crusading, free-booting sovereigns of Holland and Friesland, and would himself have been more at home and more useful in the eleventh century than in the sixteenth.