History of the United Netherlands, 1586c | Page 8

principal use to
which this newly discovered "people" had been applied, was to confer
its absolute sovereignty unconditionally upon one man. The people was
to be sovereign in order that it might immediately abdicate in favour of
the Earl.
Utrecht, the capital of the Leicestrians, had already been deprived of its
constitution. The magistracy was, according to law, changed every year.
A list of candidates was furnished by the retiring board, an equal
number of names was added by the governor of the Province, and from
the catalogue thus composed the governor with his council selected the
new magistrates for the year. But De Villiers, the governor of the

Province, had been made a prisoner by the enemy in the last campaign;
Count Moeurs had been appointed provisional stadholder by the States;
and, during his temporary absence on public affairs, the Leicestrians
had seized upon the government, excluded all the ancient magistrates,
banished many leading citizens from the town, and installed an entirely
new board, with Gerard Proninck, called Deventer, for chief
burgomaster, who was a Brabantine refugee just arrived in the Province,
and not eligible to office until after ten years' residence.
It was not unnatural that the Netherlanders, who remembered the
scenes of bloodshed and disorder produced by the memorable attempt
of the Duke of Anjou to obtain possession of Antwerp and other cities,
should be suspicious of Leicester. Anjou, too, had been called to the
Provinces by the voluntary action of the States. He too had been hailed
as a Messiah and a deliverer. In him too had unlimited confidence been
reposed, and he had repaid their affection and their gratitude by a
desperate attempt to obtain the control of their chief cities by the armed
hand, and thus to constitute himself absolute sovereign of the
Netherlands. The inhabitants had, after a bloody contest, averted the
intended massacre and the impending tyranny; but it was not
astonishing that--so very, few years having elapsed since those tragical
events--they should be inclined to scan severely the actions of the man
who had already obtained by unconstitutional means the mastery of a
most important city, and was supposed to harbour designs upon all the
cities.
No, doubt it was a most illiberal and unwise policy for the inhabitants
of the independent States to exclude from office the wanderers, for
conscience' sake, from the obedient Provinces. They should have been
welcomed heart and hand by those who were their brethren in religion
and in the love of freedom. Moreover, it was notorious that Hohenlo,
lieutenant-general under Maurice of Nassau, was a German, and that by
the treaty with England, two foreigners sat in the state council, while
the army swarmed with English, Irish, end German officers in high
command. Nevertheless, violently to subvert the constitution of a
Province, and to place in posts of high responsibility men who were
ineligible--some whose characters were suspicious, and some who were
known to be dangerous, and to banish large numbers of respectable
burghers--was the act of a despot.

Besides their democratic doctrines, the Leicestrians proclaimed and
encouraged an exclusive and rigid Calvinism.
It would certainly be unjust and futile to detract from the vast debt
which the republic owed to the Geneva Church. The reformation had
entered the Netherlands by the Walloon gate. The earliest and most
eloquent preachers, the most impassioned converts, the sublimest
martyrs, had lived, preached, fought, suffered, and died with the
precepts of Calvin in their hearts. The fire which had consumed the last
vestige of royal and sacerdotal despotism throughout the independent
republic, had been lighted by the hands of Calvinists.
Throughout the blood-stained soil of France, too, the men who were
fighting the same great battle as were the Netherlanders against Philip
II. and the Inquisition, the valiant cavaliers of Dauphiny and Provence,
knelt on the ground, before the battle, smote their iron breasts with their
mailed hands, uttered a Calvinistic prayer, sang a psalm of Marot, and
then charged upon Guise, or upon Joyeuse, under the white plume of
the Bearnese. And it was on the Calvinist weavers and clothiers of
Rochelle that the great Prince relied in the hour of danger as much as
on his mountain chivalry. In England too, the seeds of liberty, wrapped
up in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last
destined to float over land and sea, and to bear large harvests of
temperate freedom for great commonwealths, which were still unborn.
Nevertheless there was a growing aversion in many parts of the States
for the rigid and intolerant spirit of the reformed religion. There were
many men in Holland who had already imbibed the true lesson--the
only, one worth learning of the reformation--liberty of thought; but
toleration in the eyes of the extreme Calvinistic party was as great a