all his offices, and signified his intention of
leaving the provinces.

Margaret had previously invited him to an interview at Brussels, which he
had declined, because he had discovered a conspiracy in that place to
"play him a trick." Assonleville had already been sent to him without
effect. He had refused to meet a deputation of Fleece Knights at Mechlin,
from the same suspicion of foul play. After the termination of the
Antwerp tumult, Orange again wrote to the Duchess, upon the 19th March,
repeating his refusal to take the oath, and stating that he considered
himself as at least suspended from all his functions, since she had
refused, upon the ground of incapacity, to accept his formal resignation.
Margaret now determined, by the advice of the state council, to send
Secretary Berty, provided with an ample letter of instructions, upon a
special mission to the Prince at Antwerp. That respectable functionary
performed his task with credit, going through the usual formalities, and
adducing the threadbare arguments in favor of the unlimited oath, with
much adroitness and decorum. He mildly pointed out the impropriety of
laying down such responsible posts as those which the Prince now occupied
at such a juncture. He alluded to the distress which the step must
occasion to the debonair sovereign.

William of Orange became somewhat impatient under the official lecture of
this secretary to the privy council, a mere man of sealing-wax and
protocols. The slender stock of platitudes with which he had come
provided was soon exhausted. His arguments shrivelled at once in the
scorn with which the Prince received them. The great statesman, who, it
was hoped, would be entrapped to ruin, dishonor, and death by such very
feeble artifices, asked indignantly whether it were really expected that
he should acknowledge himself perjured to his old obligations by now
signing new ones; that he should disgrace himself by an unlimited pledge
which might require him to break his oaths to the provincial statutes and
to the Emperor; that he should consent to administer the religious edicts
which he abhorred; that he should act as executioner of Christians on
account of their religious opinions, an office against which his soul
revolted; that he should bind himself by an unlimited promise which might
require, him to put his own wife to death, because she was a Lutheran?
Moreover, was it to be supposed that he would obey without restriction
any orde