out of the Netherlands to some place where she could receive the
sacrament according to the Augsburg Confession. In case she were in
sickness or perils of childbirth, the Prince, if necessary, would call
to her an evangelical preacher, who might administer to her the holy
sacrament in her chamber. The children who might spring from the
marriage were to be instructed as to the doctrines of the Augsburg
Confession.

Even if executed, this celebrated memorandum would hardly have been
at variance with the declarations made by the Prince to the Spanish
government. He had never pretended that his bride was to become a
Catholic, but only to live as a Catholic. All that he had promised,
or was expected to promise, was that his wife should conform to the law
in the Netherlands. The paper, in a general way, recognized that law.
In case of absolute necessity, however, it was stipulated that the
Princess should have the advantage of private sacraments. This certainly
would have been a mortal offence in a Calvinist or Anabaptist, but for
Lutherans the practise had never been so strict. Moreover, the Prince
already repudiated the doctrines of the edicts, and rebelled against the
command to administer them within his government. A general promise,
therefore, made by him privately, in the sense of the memorandum drawn up
by the Elector, would have been neither hypocritical nor deceitful, but
worthy the man who looked over such grovelling heads as Granvelle and
Philip on the one side, or Augustus of Saxony on the other, and estimated
their religious pretences at exactly what they were worth. A formal
document, however, technically according all these demands made by the
Elector, would certainly be regarded by the Spanish government as a very
culpable instrument. The Prince never signed the note, but, as we shall
have occasion to state in its proper place, he gave a verbal declaration,
favorable to its tenor, but in very vague and brief terms, before a