can break down the dikes, inundate the country, and let the water and
the Spaniards fight it out between them."

20. About this time, too, the decrees of the famous Council of Trent,
which had been convened in 1545 to take into consideration the state
of the Church and the means of checking the new religion, and which
had closed its sittings in the end of 1563, were made public; and
Philip, the most zealous Catholic of his time, issued immediate orders
for their being enforced both in Spain and in the Netherlands. In
Spain the decrees were received as a matter of course, the council
having authority over the Catholic people; but the attempt to force
the mandates of an ecclesiastical body upon a people who neither
acknowledged its authority nor believed in its truth, was justly
regarded as an outrage, and the whole country burst out in a storm of
indignation. In many places the decrees were not executed at all; and
wherever the authorities did attempt to execute them, the people rose
and compelled them to desist.

21. A political club or confederacy was organized among the nobility
for the express purpose of resisting the establishment of the
Inquisition. They bound themselves by a solemn oath "to oppose the
introduction of the Inquisition, whether it were attempted openly or
secretly, or by whatever name it should be called," and also to
protect and defend each other from all the consequences which might
result from their having formed this league.

22. Perplexed and alarmed, the regent implored the Prince of Orange
and his two associates, Counts Egmont and Horn, to return to the
council and give her their advice. They did so; and a speech of the
Prince of Orange, in which he asserted strongly the utter folly of