Proclamations and commissions followed hard upon each other, but it was
not till April 1573, that the matter was definitely arranged. Before
that day arrived, the commerce of the Netherlands had suffered, at the
lowest computation, a dead loss of two million florins, not a stiver of
which was ever reimbursed to the sufferers by the Spanish government.

Meantime, neither in the complacency of his triumph over William of
Orange, nor in the torrent of his wrath against the English Queen, did
the Duke for a moment lose sight of the chief end of his existence in the
Netherlands. The gibbet and the stake were loaded with their daily
victims. The records of the period are foul with the perpetually renewed
barbarities exercised against the new religion. To the magistrates of
the different cities were issued fresh instructions, by which all
municipal officers were to be guided in the discharge of their great
duty. They were especially enjoined by the Duke to take heed that
Catholic midwives, and none other, should be provided for every parish,
duly sworn to give notice within twenty-four hours of every birth which
occurred, in order that the curate might instantly proceed to baptism.
They were also ordered to appoint certain spies who should keep watch at
every administration of the sacraments, whether public or private,
whether at the altar or at death-beds, and who should report for
exemplary punishment (that is to say, death by fire) all persons who made
derisive or irreverential gestures, or who did not pay suitable honor to
the said Sacraments. Furthermore, in order that not even death itself
should cheat the tyrant of his prey, the same spies were to keep watch at
the couch of the dying, and to give immediate notice to government of all
persons who should dare to depart this life without previously receiving
extreme unction and the holy wafer. The estates of such culprits, it was
ordained, should be confiscated, and their bodies dragged to the public
place of execution.