William, Prince of Orange, was born in Nassau, April 23, 1533, and was
assassinated at the convent of St. Agatha, in Delft, July 10, 1584,
when a trifle over fifty-one years of age. Let us get our
chronological bearings accurately: Luther died in 1546; Lepanto was
fought in 1571; the Massacre of St. Bartholomew occurred in 1572; the
Invincible Armada was destroyed in 1588; Philip was crowned king in
October of 1555, and died at the Escurial in 1598; the Spanish
Inquisition was established in 1480 by Ferdinand and Isabella; the
Edict of Nantes was promulgated in 1598; Queen Elizabeth Tudor ascended
her throne in 1558; America received her first permanent colony in
1585, at St. Augustine, Florida. From this assemblage of dates, we see
in what a ferment of momentous civil, religious, and political events
the Prince of Orange found his life cast. We may not choose our time
to live, not yet our time to die; but some eras are spacious above
others, not length, but achievement, making an age illustrious.
William the Silent's age was a maelstrom of events, and there were no
quiet waters; and this appears certain: The dominant force of those
turbulent times was religious, by which I mean that religion is the key
of all movements, politics being shaped by theological dogmas and
purposes. These dates certify to the omnipresence of religious
movement; for the Inquisition, Lepanto, the great Armada, the Edict of
Nantes, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are all ecclesiastical in
intent, by which is not at all meant they were good, but were perverted
religious views, in which human wickedness, ambition, and bigotry
pre-empted religion, and used it as a medium of expression, and in turn
were used by the thing they had fostered. No more prevalent
misconception prevails than that religion is the cause of outrageous
violence, disorder, and misconduct; the truth being, rather, men's
passions, under guise of religion, rush their own wanton course. In
this particular era of history, all movements were religious, as has
been shown; and Philip thought himself the apostle of religion, chosen
of God, and was used by the Roman Catholic Church, and, as a wise
historian affirms, "In fanatical enthusiasm for Catholicism, he was
surpassed by no man who ever lived." His religion and his ambition
were fellow-conspirators. Philip II of Spain was a Roman Catholic
fanatic; Charles IX of France was a weak mind, of no definite religious
conviction,