governor."

With the departure of Orange, a total eclipse seemed to come over the
Netherlands. The country was absolutely helpless, the popular heart cold
with apprehension. All persons at all implicated in the late troubles,
or suspected of heresy, fled from their homes. Fugitive soldiers were
hunted into rivers, cut to pieces in the fields, hanged, burned, or
drowned, like dogs, without quarter, and without remorse. The most
industrious and valuable part of the population left the land in droves.
The tide swept outwards with such rapidity that the Netherlands seemed
fast becoming the desolate waste which they had been before the Christian
era. Throughout the country, those Reformers who were unable to effect
their escape betook themselves to their old lurking-places. The new
religion was banished from all the cities, every conventicle was broken
up by armed men, the preachers and leading members were hanged, their
disciples beaten with rods, reduced to beggary, or imprisoned, even if
they sometimes escaped the scaffold. An incredible number, however, were
executed for religious causes. Hardly a village so small, says the
Antwerp chronicler,--[Meteren]--but that it could furnish one, two, or
three hundred victims to the executioner. The new churches were levelled
to the ground, and out of their timbers gallows were constructed. It was
thought an ingenious pleasantry to hang the Reformers upon the beams
under which they had hoped to worship God. The property of the fugitives
was confiscated. The beggars in name became beggars in reality. Many
who felt obliged to remain, and who loved their possessions better than
their creed, were suddenly converted into the most zealous of Catholics.
Persons who had for years not gone to mass, never omitted now their daily
and nightly visits to the churches. Persons who had never spoken to an
ecclesiastic but with contumely, now could not eat their dinners without
one at their table. Many who were suspected of having participated in