carrying the measures against the patriot party, brought on in
the night an attack of apoplexy.

It was resolved to despatch a special envoy to Spain, to explain
to Philip the views of the council, and to lay before him a plan
proposed by the Prince of Orange for forming a junction between
the two councils and that of finance, and forming them into one
body. The object of this measure was at once to give greater
union and power to the provisional government, to create a central
administration in the Netherlands, and to remove from some obscure
and avaricious financiers the exclusive management of the national
resources. The Count of Egmont, chosen by the council for this
important mission, set out for Madrid in the month of February,
1565. Philip received him with profound hypocrisy; loaded him
with the most flattering promises; sent him back in the utmost
elation: and when the credulous count returned to Brussels, he
found that the written orders, of which he was the bearer, were
in direct variance with every word which the king had uttered.

These orders were chiefly concerning the reiterated subject of
the persecution to be inflexibly pursued against the religious
reformers. Not satisfied with the hitherto established forms of
punishment, Philip now expressly commanded that the more revolting
means decreed by his father in the rigor of his early zeal, such
as burning, living burial, and the like, should be adopted; and
he somewhat more obscurely directed that the victims should be no
longer publicly immolated, but secretly destroyed. He endeavored,
by this vague phraseology, to avoid the actual utterance of the word
"inquisition"; but he thus virtually established that atrocious
tribunal, with attributes still more terrific than even in Spain;