to pronounce the hated word. She wrote despairing letters to Philip,
describing the condition of the land and her own agony in the gloomiest
colors. Since the arrival of the royal orders, she said, things had gone
from bad to worse. The King had been ill advised. It was useless to
tell the people that the inquisition had always existed in the provinces.
They maintained that it was a novelty; that the institution was a more
rigorous one than the Spanish Inquisition, which, said Margaret, "was
most odious, as the King knew." It was utterly impossible to carry the
edicts into execution. Nearly all the governors of provinces had told
her plainly that they would not help to burn fifty or sixty thousand
Netherlanders. Thus bitterly did Margaret of Parma bewail the royal
decree; not that she had any sympathy for the victims, but because she
felt the increasing danger to the executioner. One of two things it was
now necessary to decide upon, concession or armed compulsion. Meantime,
while Philip was slowly and secretly making his levies, his sister, as
well as his people, was on the rack. Of all the seigniors, not one was
placed in so painful a position as Egmont. His military reputation and
his popularity made him too important a personage to be slighted, yet he
was deeply mortified at the lamentable mistake which he had committed.
He now averred that he would never take arms against the King, but that
he would go where man should never see him more.

Such was the condition of the nobles, greater and less. That of the
people could not well be worse. Famine reigned in the land. Emigration,
caused not by over population, but by persecution, was fast weakening the
country. It was no wonder that not only, foreign merchants should be
scared from the great commercial cities by the approaching disorders; but
that every industrious artisan who could find the means of escape should
seek refuge among strangers, wherever an asylum could be found. That
asylum was afforded by Protestant England, who received these intelligent