magistracy of Antwerp, who came with a prayer for mercy in behalf of some
of their most distinguished fellow-citizens, then in prison, the Duke
gave a most passionate and ferocious reply. He expressed his wonder that
the citizens of Antwerp, that hotbed of treason, should dare to approach
him in behalf of traitors and heretics. Let them look to it in future,
he continued, or he would hang every man in the whole city, to set an
example to the rest of the country; for his Majesty would rather the
whole land should become an uninhabited wilderness, than that a single
Dissenter should exist within its territory.

Events now marched with rapidity. The monarch seemed disposed literally
to execute the threat of his viceroy. Early in the year, the most
sublime sentence of death was promulgated which has ever been pronounced
since the creation of the world. The Roman tyrant wished that his
enemies' heads were all upon a single neck, that he might strike them off
at a blow; the inquisition assisted Philip to place the heads of all his
Netherland subjects upon a single neck for the same fell purpose. Upon
the 16th February, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the
inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal
doom only a few persons, especially named; were excepted. A proclamation
of the King, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the
inquisition, and ordered it to be carried into instant execution, without
regard to age, sex, or condition. This is probably the most concise
death-warrant that was ever framed. Three millions of people, men,
women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in: three lines; and,
as it was well known that these were not harmless thunders, like some
bulls of the Vatican, but serious and practical measures, which it was
intended should be enforced, the horror which they produced may be easily
imagined. It was hardly the purpose of Government to compel the absolute
completion of the wholesale plan in all its length and breadth, yet in