at Brussels declared to Requesens "that they would rather die the death
than see any change in their religion." That feeling had rather
increased than diminished. Although there was a strong party attached to
the new faith, there was perhaps a larger, certainly a more influential
body, which regarded the ancient Church with absolute fidelity. Owing
partly to the persecution which had, in the course of years, banished so
many thousands of families from the soil, partly to the coercion, which
was more stringent in the immediate presence of the Crown's
representative, partly to the stronger infusion of the Celtic element,
which from the earliest ages had always been so keenly alive to the more
sensuous and splendid manifestations of the devotional principle--owing
to those and many other causes, the old religion, despite of all the
outrages which had been committed in its name, still numbered a host of
zealous adherents in the fifteen provinces. Attempts against its
sanctity were regarded with jealous eyes. It was believed, and with
reason, that there was a disposition on the part of the Reformers to
destroy it root and branch. It was suspected that the same enginery of
persecution would be employed in its extirpation, should the opposite
party gain the supremacy, which the Papists had so long employed against
the converts to the new religion.

As to political convictions, the fifteen provinces differed much less
from their two sisters. There was a strong attachment to their old
constitutions; a general inclination to make use of the present crisis to
effect their restoration. At the same time, it had not come to be the
general conviction, as in Holland and Zealand, that the maintenance of
those liberties was incompatible with the continuance of Philip's
authority. There was, moreover, a strong aristocratic faction which was
by no means disposed to take a liberal view of government in general, and
regarded with apprehension the simultaneous advance of heretical notions