History of the United Netherlands, 1586c | Page 9

vice as it could be in the estimation of Papists. To a favoured few of
other habits of thought, it had come to be regarded as a virtue; but the
day was still far distant when men were to scorn the very word
toleration as an insult to the dignity of man; as if for any human being
or set of human beings, in caste, class, synod, or church, the right could
even in imagination be conceded of controlling the consciences of their
fellow-creatures.
But it was progress for the sixteenth century that there were individuals,
and prominent individuals, who dared to proclaim liberty of conscience
for all. William of Orange was a Calvinist, sincere and rigid, but he

denounced all oppression of religion, and opened wide the doors of the
Commonwealth to Papists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists alike. The Earl
of Leicester was a Calvinist, most rigid in tenet, most edifying of
conversation, the acknowledged head of the Puritan party of England,
but he was intolerant and was influenced only by the most intolerant of
his sect. Certainly it would have required great magnanimity upon his
part to assume a friendly demeanour towards the Papists. It is easier for
us, in more favoured ages, to rise to the heights of philosophical
abstraction, than for a man, placed as was Leicester, in the front rank of
a mighty battle, in which the triumph of either religion seemed to
require the bodily annihilation of all its adversaries. He believed that
the success of a Catholic conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth or of a
Spanish invasion of England, would raise Mary to the throne and
consign himself to the scaffold. He believed that the subjugation of the
independent Netherlands would place the Spaniards instantly in
England, and he frequently received information, true or false, of
Popish plots that were ever hatching in various parts of the Provinces
against the English Queen. It was not surprising, therefore, although it
was unwise, that he should incline his ear most seriously to those who
counselled severe measures not only against Papists, but against those
who were not persecutors of Papists, and that he should allow himself
to be guided by adventurers, who wore the mask of religion only that
they might plunder the exchequer and rob upon the highway.
Under the administration of this extreme party, therefore, the Papists
were maltreated, disfranchised, banished, and plundered. The
distribution of the heavy war-taxes, more than two-thirds of which were
raised in Holland only, was confided to foreigners, and regulated
mainly at Utrecht, where not one-tenth part of the same revenue was
collected. This naturally excited the wrath of the merchants and
manufacturers of Holland and the other Provinces, who liked not that
these hard-earned and lavishly-paid subsidies should be meddled with
by any but the cleanest hands.
The clergy, too, arrogated a direct influence in political affairs. Their
demonstrations were opposed by the anti-Leicestrians, who cared not to
see a Geneva theocracy in the place of the vanished Papacy. They had
as little reverence in secular affairs for Calvinistic deacons as for the
college of cardinals, and would as soon accept the infallibility of Sixtus

V. as that of Herman Modet. The reformed clergy who had
dispossessed and confiscated the property of the ancient ecclesiastics
who once held a constitutional place in the Estates of Utrecht--although
many of those individuals were now married and had embraced the
reformed religion who had demolished, and sold at public auction, for
12,300 florins, the time-honoured cathedral where the earliest
Christians of the Netherlands had worshipped, and St. Willibrod had
ministered, were roundly rebuked, on more than one occasion, by the
blunt matters beyond their sphere.
The party of the States-General, as opposed to the Leicester party, was
guided by the statesmen of Holland. At a somewhat later period was
formed the States-right party, which claimed sovereignty for each
Province, and by necessary consequence the hegemony throughout the
confederacy, for Holland. At present the doctrine maintained was that
the sovereignty forfeited by Philip had naturally devolved upon the
States-General. The statesmen of this party repudiated the calumny that
it had therefore lapsed into the hands of half a dozen mechanics and
men of low degree. The States of each Province were, they maintained,
composed of nobles and country-gentlemen, as representing the
agricultural interest, and of deputies from the 'vroedschappen,' or
municipal governments, of every city and smallest town.
Such men as Adrian Van der Werff, the heroic burgomaster of Leyden
during its famous siege, John Van der Does, statesman, orator, soldier,
poet, Adolphus Meetkerke, judge, financier, politician, Carl Roorda,
Noel de Carom diplomatist of most signal ability, Floris Thin, Paul
Buys, and Olden-Barneveld, with many others, who would have done
honour to the legislative assemblies and national councils in any
country or any