The scheme for mitigating the edicts by the substitution of strangling for burning, was not destined therefore far much success either in Spain or in the provinces; but the people by whom the next great movement was made in the drama of the revolt, conducted themselves in a manner to shame the sovereign who oppressed, and the riotous nobles who had undertaken to protect their liberties.

At this very moment, in the early summer of 1566, many thousands of burghers, merchants, peasants, and gentlemen, were seen mustering and marching through the fields of every province, armed with arquebus, javelin, pike and broadsword.  For what purpose were these gatherings?  Only to hear sermons and to sing hymns in the open air, as it was unlawful to profane the churches with such rites.  This was the first great popular phase of the Netherland rebellion.  Notwithstanding the edicts and the inquisition with their daily hecatombs, notwithstanding the special publication at this time throughout the country by the Duchess Regent that all the sanguinary statutes concerning religion were in as great vigor as ever, notwithstanding that Margaret offered a reward of seven hundred crowns to the man who would bring her a preacher—­dead or alive,—­the popular thirst for the exercises of the reformed religion could no longer be slaked at the obscure and hidden fountains where their priests had so long privately ministered.

Partly emboldened by a temporary lull in the persecution, partly encouraged by the presentation of the Request and by the events to which it had given rise, the Reformers now came boldly forth from their lurking places and held their religious meetings in the light of day.  The consciousness of numbers and of right had brought the conviction of strength.  The audacity of the Reformers was wonderful to the mind of President Viglius, who could find no language strong enough with which to characterize and to deplore such blasphemous conduct.  The field-preaching seemed in the eyes of government to spread with the rapidity of a malignant pestilence.  The miasma flew upon the wings of the wind.  As early as 1562, there had been public preaching in the neighborhood of Ypres.  The executions which followed, however, had for the time suppressed the practice both in that place as well as throughout Flanders and the rest of the provinces.  It now broke forth as by one impulse from one end of the country to the other.  In the latter part of June, Hermann Stryoker or Modet, a monk who had renounced his vows to become one of the most popular preachers in the Reformed Church, addressed a congregation of seven or eight thousand persons in the neighborhood of Ghent.  Peter Dathenus, another unfrocked monk, preached at various places in West Flanders, with great effect.  A man endowed with a violent, stormy eloquence, intemperate as most zealots, he was then rendering better services to the cause of the Reformation than he was destined to do at later periods.