demanded his care. The field-preaching had spread in that region with
prodigious rapidity. Armed assemblages, utterly beyond the power of the
civil authorities, were taking place daily in the neighborhood of
Amsterdam. Yet the Duchess could not allow him to visit his government
in the north. If he could be spared from Antwerp for a day, it was
necessary that he should aid her in a fresh complication with the
confederated nobles in the very midst, therefore, of his Antwerp labors,
he had been obliged, by Margaret's orders, to meet a committee at Duffel.
For in this same eventful month of July a great meeting was held by the
members of the Compromise at St. Trond, in the bishopric of Liege. They
came together on the thirteenth of the month, and remained assembled till
the beginning of August. It was a wild, tumultuous convention, numbering
some fifteen hundred cavaliers, each with his esquires and armed
attendants; a larger and more important gathering than had yet been held.
Brederode and Count Louis were the chieftains of the assembly, which, as
may be supposed from its composition and numbers, was likely to be
neither very orderly in its demonstrations nor wholesome in its results.
It was an ill-timed movement. The convention was too large for
deliberation, too riotous to inspire confidence. The nobles quartered
themselves every where in the taverns and the farm-houses of the
neighborhood, while large numbers encamped upon the open fields. There
was a constant din of revelry and uproar, mingled with wordy warfare, and
an occasional crossing of swords. It seemed rather like a congress of
ancient, savage Batavians, assembled in Teutonic fashion to choose a king
amid hoarse shouting, deep drinking, and the clash of spear and shield,
than a meeting for a lofty and earnest purpose, by their civilized
descendants. A crowd of spectators, landlopers, mendicants, daily
aggregated themselves to the aristocratic assembly, joining, with natural
unction, in the incessant shout of "Vivent les gueux!" It was impossible
that so soon after their baptism the self-styled beggars should repudiate