When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
Catholic sympathies. "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
world!" he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
that of Rome even if corrupted." He expressed his belief in the real
presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
chalice for the blood of Christ. The English bishops, he averred,
drew their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time
from the Pope.

As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his
illustrious uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness
than tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."

For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
Puritans. Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
revolt, which had been going on all his lifetime and of which he never
expected to see the end, had begun by petition for matters of religion.
"His mother and he from their cradles," he said, "had been haunted with a
Puritan devil, which he feared would not leave him to his grave. And he
would hazard his crown but he would suppress those malicious spirits."
It seemed a strange caprice of Destiny that assigned to this hater of
Netherlanders, of Puritans, and of the Reformed religion, the decision of
disputed points between Puritans and anti-Puritans in the Reformed Church
of the Netherlands.