On this same day, two other important arrests, included and arranged in the same program, had been successfully accomplished.  Bakkerzeel, private and confidential secretary of Egmont, and Antony Van Straalen, the rich and influential burgomaster of Antwerp, were taken almost simultaneously.  At the request of Alva, the burgomaster had been invited by the Duchess of Parma to repair on business to Brussels.  He seemed to have feared an ambuscade, for as he got into his coach to set forth upon the journey, he was so muffed in a multiplicity of clothing, that he was scarcely to be recognized.  He was no sooner, however, in the open country and upon a spot remote from human habitations, than he was suddenly beset by a band of forty soldiers under command of Don Alberic Lodron and Don Sancho de Lodrono.  These officers had been watching his movements for many days.  The capture of Bakkerzeel was accomplished with equal adroitness at about the same hour.

Alva, while he sat at the council board with Egmont and Horn, was secretly informed that those important personages, Bakkerzeel and Straalen, with the private secretary of the Admiral, Alonzo de la Loo, in addition, had been thus successfully arrested.  He could with difficulty conceal his satisfaction, and left the apartment immediately that the trap might be sprung upon the two principal victims of his treachery.  He had himself arranged all the details of these two important arrests, while his natural son, the Prior Don Ferdinando, had been compelled to superintend the proceedings.  The plot had been an excellent plot, and was accomplished as successfully as it bad been sagaciously conceived.  None but Spaniards had been employed in any part of the affair.  Officers of high rank in his Majesty’s army had performed the part of spies and policemen with much adroitness, nor was it to be expected that the duty would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the Knights of Saint John was superintendent of the operations, when the Captain-General of the Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when all, from subaltern to viceroy, had received minute instructions as to the contemplated treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police, who sat on the throne of Castile and Aragon.

No sooner were these gentlemen in custody than the secretary Albornoz was dispatched to the house of Count Horn, and to that of Bakkerzeel, where all papers were immediately seized, inventoried, and placed in the hands of the Duke.  Thus, if amid the most secret communications of Egmont and Horn or their correspondents, a single treasonable thought should be lurking, it was to go hard but it might be twisted into a cord strong enough to strangle them all.