s influence, who had
placed himself towards the Crown in a false position, from which he might
even yet be rescued; for to sacrifice the whims of a reforming and
transitory religious fanaticism, which had spun itself for a moment about
so clear a brain, would, he thought, prove but a trifling task for so
experienced a politician as the Prince. William of Orange, on the other
hand, looked upon his young antagonist as the most brilliant
impersonation which had yet been seen of the foul spirit of persecution.

It will be necessary to follow, somewhat more in detail than is usually
desirable, the interchange of conversations, letters, and protocols, out
of which the brief but important administration of Don John was composed;
for it was exactly in such manifestations that the great fight was really
proceeding. Don John meant peace, wise William meant war, for he knew
that no other issue was possible. Peace, in reality, was war in its worst
shape. Peace would unchain every priestly tongue, and unsheath every
knightly sword in the fifteen provinces against little Holland and
Zealand. He had been able to bind all the provinces together by the
hastily forged chain of the Ghent treaty, and had done what he could to
strengthen that union by the principle of mutual religious respect. By
the arrival of Don John that work had been deranged. It had, however,
been impossible for the Prince thoroughly to infuse his own ideas on the
subject of toleration into the hearts of his nearest associates. He could
not hope to inspire his deadly enemies with a deeper sympathy. Was he not
himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers, because of his leniency
to Catholics? Nay more, was not his intimate councillor, the accomplished
Saint Aldegonde, in despair because the Prince refused to exclude the
Anabaptists of Holland from the rights of citizenship? At the very moment
when William was straining every nerve to unite warring sects, and to
persuade men's hearts into a system by which their consciences were to be
laid open to God alone--at the moment when it was most necessary for the
very existence of the fatherland that Catholic and Protestant should
mingle their social and political relations, it was indeed a bitter
disappointment for him to see wise statesmen of his own creed unable to
rise to the idea of toleration. "The affair of the Anabaptists," wrote
Saint Aldegonde, "has been renewed. The Prince objects to exclude them
from citizenship.