no rebel then—­Philip no legitimate monarch.  Even were the Prince rebellious, it was no more than Philip’s ancestor, Albert of Austria, had been towards his anointed sovereign, Emperor Adolphus of Nassau, ancestor of William.  The ties of allegiance and conventional authority being, severed, it had become idle for the King to affect superiority of lineage to the man whose family had occupied illustrious stations when the Habsburgs were obscure squires in Switzerland, and had ruled as sovereign in the Netherlands before that overshadowing house had ever been named.

But whatever the hereditary claims of Philip in the country, he had forfeited them by the violation of his oaths, by his tyrannical suppression of the charters of the land; while by his personal crimes he had lost all pretension to sit in judgment upon his fellow man.  Was a people not justified in rising against authority when all their laws had been trodden under foot, “not once only, but a million of times?”—­and was William of Orange, lawful husband of the virtuous Charlotte de Bourbon, to be denounced for moral delinquency by a lascivious, incestuous, adulterous, and murderous king?  With horrible distinctness he laid before the monarch all the crimes of which he believed him guilty, and having thus told Philip to his beard, “thus diddest thou,” he had a withering word for the priest who stood at his back.  “Tell me,” he cried, “by whose command Cardinal Granvelle administered poison to the Emperor Maximilian?  I know what the Emperor told me, and how much fear he felt afterwards for the King and for all Spaniards.”

He ridiculed the effrontery of men like Philip and Granvelle; in charging “distrust” upon others, when it was the very atmosphere of their own existence.  He proclaimed that sentiment to be the only salvation for the country.  He reminded Philip of the words which his namesake of Macedon—­a schoolboy in tyranny, compared to himself—­had heard from the lips of Demosthenes—­that the strongest fortress of a free people against a tyrant was distrust.  That sentiment, worthy of eternal memory, the Prince declared that he had taken from the “divine philippic,” to engrave upon the heart, of the nation, and he prayed God that he might be more readily believed than the great orator had been by his people.

He treated with scorn the price set upon his head, ridiculing this project to terrify him, for its want of novelty, and asking the monarch if he supposed the rebel ignorant of the various bargains which had frequently been made before with cutthroats and poisoners to take away his life.  “I am in the hand of God,” said William of Orange; “my worldly goods and my life have been long since dedicated to His service.  He will dispose of them as seems best for His glory and my salvation.”

On the contrary, however, if it could be demonstrated, or even hoped, that his absence would benefit the cause of the country, he proclaimed himself ready to go into exile.