Margaret had previously invited him to an interview at Brussels, which he had declined, because he had discovered a conspiracy in that place to “play him a trick.”  Assonleville had already been sent to him without effect.  He had refused to meet a deputation of Fleece Knights at Mechlin, from the same suspicion of foul play.  After the termination of the Antwerp tumult, Orange again wrote to the Duchess, upon the 19th March, repeating his refusal to take the oath, and stating that he considered himself as at least suspended from all his functions, since she had refused, upon the ground of incapacity, to accept his formal resignation.  Margaret now determined, by the advice of the state council, to send Secretary Berty, provided with an ample letter of instructions, upon a special mission to the Prince at Antwerp.  That respectable functionary performed his task with credit, going through the usual formalities, and adducing the threadbare arguments in favor of the unlimited oath, with much adroitness and decorum.  He mildly pointed out the impropriety of laying down such responsible posts as those which the Prince now occupied at such a juncture.  He alluded to the distress which the step must occasion to the debonair sovereign.

William of Orange became somewhat impatient under the official lecture of this secretary to the privy council, a mere man of sealing-wax and protocols.  The slender stock of platitudes with which he had come provided was soon exhausted.  His arguments shrivelled at once in the scorn with which the Prince received them.  The great statesman, who, it was hoped, would be entrapped to ruin, dishonor, and death by such very feeble artifices, asked indignantly whether it were really expected that he should acknowledge himself perjured to his old obligations by now signing new ones; that he should disgrace himself by an unlimited pledge which might require him to break his oaths to the provincial statutes and to the Emperor; that he should consent to administer the religious edicts which he abhorred; that he should act as executioner of Christians on account of their religious opinions, an office against which his soul revolted; that he should bind himself by an unlimited promise which might require, him to put his own wife to death, because she was a Lutheran?  Moreover, was it to be supposed that he would obey without restriction any orders issued to him in his Majesty’s name, when the King’s representative might be a person whose supremacy it ill became one of his’ race to acknowledge?  Was William of Orange to receive absolute commands from the Duke of Alva?  Having mentioned that name with indignation, the Prince became silent.

It was very obvious that no impression was to be made upon the man by formalists.  Poor Berty having conjugated his paradigm conscientiously through all its moods and tenses, returned to his green board in the council-room with his proces verbal of the conference.  Before he took his leave, however, he prevailed upon Orange to hold an interview with the Duke of Aerschot, Count Mansfeld, and Count Egmont.