e
Roman Catholic churches it was at least fair that they should be
furnished with money for erecting churches of their own. To this the
magistrate replied even if the Catholic party was the weaker it was
indisputably the better. The erection of churches should not be
forbidden them; they could not, however, after the injury which the town
had already suffered from their brethren, the Iconoclasts, very well
expect that it should be further burdened by the erection of their
churches. After long quarrelling on both sides, the Protestants
contrived to retain possession of some churches, which, for greater
security, they occupied with guards. In Valenciennes, too, the
Protestants refused submission to the conditions which were offered to
them through Philip St. Aldegonde, Baron of Noircarmes, to whom, in the
absence of the Marquis of Bergen, the government of that place was
entrusted. A reformed preacher, La Grange, a Frenchman by birth, who by
his eloquence had gained a complete command over them, urged them to
insist on having churches of their own within the town, and to threaten
in case of refusal to deliver it up to the Huguenots. A sense of the
superior numbers of the Calvinists, and of their understanding with the
Huguenots, prevented the governor adopting forcible measures against
them.

Count Egmont, also to manifest his zeal for the king's service, did
violence to his natural kind-heartedness. Introducing a garrison into
the town of Ghent, he caused some of the most refractory rebels to be
put to death. The churches were reopened, the Roman Catholic worship
renewed, and all foreigners, without exception, ordered to quit the
province. To the Calvinists, but to them alone, a site was granted
outside the town for the erection of a church. In return they were
compelled to pledge themselves to the most rigid obedience to the
municipal authorities, and to active co-operation in the proceedings
against the Iconoclasts. He pursued similar measures through all
Flanders and Artois. One of his noblemen, John Cassembrot, Baron of
Beckerzeel, and a leaguer, pursuing the Iconoclasts at the head of some
horsemen of the league, surprised a band of them just as they were about
to break into a town of Hainault, near Grammont, in Flanders, and took
thirty of them prisoners, of whom twenty-two were hung upon the spot,
and the rest whipped out of the province.

Services of such importance one would have thought scarcely deserved to