"play him a trick." Assonleville had already been sent to him without
effect. He had refused to meet a deputation of Fleece Knights at
Mechlin, from the same suspicion of foul play. After the termination of
the Antwerp tumult, Orange again wrote to the Duchess, upon the 19th
March, repeating his refusal to take the oath, and stating that he
considered himself as at least suspended from all his functions, since
she had refused, upon the ground of incapacity, to accept his formal
resignation. Margaret now determined, by the advice of the state
council, to send Secretary Berty, provided with an ample letter of
instructions, upon a special mission to the Prince at Antwerp. That
respectable functionary performed his task with credit, going through the
usual formalities, and adducing the threadbare arguments in favor of the
unlimited oath, with much adroitness and decorum. He mildly pointed out
the impropriety of laying down such responsible posts as those which the
Prince now occupied at such a juncture. He alluded to the distress which
the step must occasion to the debonair sovereign.

William of Orange became somewhat impatient under the official lecture
of this secretary to the privy council, a mere man of sealing-wax and
protocols. The slender stock of platitudes with which he had come
provided was soon exhausted. His arguments shrivelled at once in the
scorn with which the Prince received them. The great statesman, who, it
was hoped, would be entrapped to ruin, dishonor, and death by such very
feeble artifices, asked indignantly whether it were really expected that
he should acknowledge himself perjured to his old obligations by now
signing new ones; that he should disgrace himself by an unlimited pledge
which might require him to break his oaths to the provincial statutes and
to the Emperor; that he should consent to administer the religious edicts
which he abhorred; that he should act as executioner of Christians on
account of their religious opinions, an office against which his soul