ter passed to acts. Seventy
papists were banished from the city of Utrecht at the time of the arrest
of Buys. The Queen had constantly enforced upon Leicester the importance
of dealing justly with the Catholics in the Netherlands, on the ground
that they might be as good patriots and were as much interested in the
welfare of their country as were the Protestants; and he was especially
enjoined "not to meddle in matters of religion." This wholesome advice it
would have been quite impossible for the Earl, under the guidance of
Reingault, Burgrave, and Stephen Perret, to carry out. He protested that
he should have liked to treat Papists and Calvinists "with indifference,"
but that it had proved impossible; that the Catholics were perpetually
plotting with the Spanish faction, and that no towns were safe except
those in which Papists had been excluded from office. "They love the Pope
above all," he said, "and the Prince of Parma hath continual intelligence
with them." Nor was it Catholics alone who gave the governor trouble. He
was likewise very busy in putting down other denominations that differed
from the Calvinists. "Your Majesty will not believe," he said, "the
number of sects that are in most towns; especially Anabaptists, Families
of Love, Georgians; and I know not what. The godly and good ministers
were molested by them in many places, and ready to give over; and even
such diversities grew among magistrates in towns, being caused by some
sedition-sowers here." It is however, satisfactory to reflect that the
anabaptists and families of love, although discouraged and frowned upon,
were not burned alive, buried alive, drowned in dungeons, and roasted at
slow fires, as had been the case with them and with every other species
of Protestants, by thousands and tens of thousands, so long as Charles V.
and Philip II. had ruled the territory of that commonwealth. Humanity had
acquired something by the war which the Netherlanders had been waging for
twenty years, and no man or woman was ever put to death for religious
causes after the establishment of the republic.

With his hands thus full of business, it was difficult for the Earl to
obey the Queen's command not to meddle in religious matters; for he was
not of the stature of William the Silent, and could not comprehend that
the great lesson taught by the sixteenth century was that men were not to
meddle with men in matters of religion.

But besides his especial nightmare--M