The course of Orange at Antwerp was consistent with his whole career.  He honestly came to arrange a pacification, but he knew that this end could be gained only by loyally maintaining the Accord which had been signed between the confederates and the Regent.  He came back to the city on the 26th August, and found order partially re-established.  The burghers having at last become thoroughly alarmed, and the fury of the image-breakers entirely appeased, it had been comparatively easy to restore tranquillity.  The tranquillity, however, rather restored itself, and when the calm had succeeded to the tempest, the placid heads of the burgomasters once, more emerged from the waves.

Three image-breakers, who had been taken in the act, were hanged by order of the magistrates upon the 28th of August.  The presence of Orange gave them courage to achieve these executions which he could not prevent, as the fifth article of the Accord enjoined the chastisement of the rioters.  The magistrates chose that the “chastisement” on this occasion should be exemplary, and it was not in the power of Orange to interfere with the regular government of the city when acting according to its laws.  The deed was not his, however, and he hastened, in order to obviate the necessity of further violence, to prepare articles of agreement, upon the basis of Margaret’s concessions.  Public preaching, according to the Reformed religion, had already taken place within the city.  Upon the 22d, possession had been taken of at least three churches.  The senate had deputed pensionary Wesenbeck to expostulate with the ministers, for the magistrates were at that moment not able to command.  Taffin, the Walloon preacher, had been tractable, and had agreed to postpone his exercises.  He furthermore had accompanied the pensionary to the cathedral, in order to persuade Herman Modet that it would be better for him likewise to defer his intended ministrations.  They had found that eloquent enthusiast already in the great church, burning with impatience to ascend upon the ruins, and quite unable to resist the temptation of setting a Flemish psalm and preaching a Flemish sermon within the walls which had for so many centuries been vocal only to the Roman tongue and the Roman ritual.  All that he would concede to the entreaties of his colleague and of the magistrate, was that his sermon should be short.  In this, however, he had overrated his powers of retention, for the sermon not only became a long one, but he had preached another upon the afternoon of the same day.  The city of Antwerp, therefore, was clearly within the seventh clause of the treaty of the 24th August, for preaching had taken place in the cathedral, previously to the signing of that Accord.