From the general tenor of the document, it is obvious both that the Prince was not yet ready to throw down the gauntlet to his sovereign, nor to proclaim his adhesion to the new religion:  Of departing from the Netherlands in the spring, he had said openly that he was still in possession of sixty thousand florins yearly, and that he should commence no hostilities against Philip, so long as he did not disturb him in his honor or his estates.  Far-seeing politician, if man ever were, he knew the course whither matters were inevitably tending, but he knew how much strength was derived from putting an adversary irretrievably in the wrong.  He still maintained an attitude of dignified respect towards the monarch, while he hurled back with defiance the insolent summons of the viceroy.  Moreover, the period had not yet arrived for him to break publicly with the ancient faith.  Statesman, rather than religionist, at this epoch, he was not disposed to affect a more complete conversion than the one which he had experienced.  He was, in truth, not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience.  His mind was already expanding beyond any dogmas of the age.  The man whom his enemies stigmatized as atheist and renegade, was really in favor of toleration, and therefore, the more deeply criminal in the eyes of all religious parties.

Events, personal to himself, were rapidly to place him in a position from which he might enter the combat with honor.

His character had already been attacked, his property threatened with confiscation.  His closest ties of family were now to be severed by the hand of the tyrant.  His eldest child, the Count de Buren, torn from his protection, was to be carried into indefinite captivity in a foreign land.  It was a remarkable oversight, for a person of his sagacity, that, upon his own departure from the provinces, he should leave his son, then a boy of thirteen years, to pursue his studies at the college of Louvain.  Thus exposed to the power of the government, he was soon seized as a hostage for the good behavior of the father.  Granvelle appears to have been the first to recommend the step in a secret letter to Philip, but Alva scarcely needed prompting.  Accordingly, upon the 13th of February, 1568, the Duke sent the Seignior de Chassy to Louvain, attended by four officers and by twelve archers.  He was furnished with a letter to the Count de Buren, in which that young nobleman was requested to place implicit confidence in the bearer of the despatch, and was informed that the desire which his Majesty had to see him educated for his service, was the cause of the communication which the Seignior de Chassy was about to make.