he could not but render thanks to God for His great mercy in thus
granting His blessing to so humble an instrument, and thus restoring so
many beautiful provinces to their ancient freedom and to the true
religion. The Prince protested that this result was already a sufficient
reward for his labors--a great consolation in his sufferings. He had
hoped, he said, that the estates, "taking into consideration his
long-continued labors, would have been willing to excuse him from a new
load of cares, and would have granted him some little rest in his already
advanced age;" that they would have selected "some other person more
fitted for the labor, whom he would himself faithfully promise to assist
to the best of his abilities, rendering him willing obedience
proportionate to the authority conferred upon him."

Like all other attempts to induce the acceptance, by the Prince, of
supreme authority, this effort proved ineffectual, from the obstinate
unwillingness of his hand to receive the proffered sceptre.

In connection with this movement, and at about the same epoch, Jacob
Swerius, member of the Brabant Council, with other deputies, waited upon
Orange, and formally tendered him the sovereign dukedom of Brabant,
forfeited and vacant by the late crime of Anjou. The Prince, however,
resolutely refused to accept the dignity, assuring the committee that he
had not the means to afford the country as much protection as they had a
right to expect from their sovereign. He added that "he would never give
the King of Spain the right-to say that the Prince of Orange had been
actuated by no other motives in his career than the hope of
self-aggrandizement, and the desire to deprive his Majesty of the
provinces in order to appropriate them to himself."

Accordingly, firmly refusing to heed the overtures of the United States,
and of Holland in particular, he continued to further the
re-establishment of Anjou--a measure in which, as he deliberately
believed, lay the only chance of union and in dependence.

The Prince of Parma, meantime, had not been idle. He had been unable to
induce the provinces to listen to his wiles, and to rush to the embrace
of the monarch whose arms he described as ever open to the repentant. He
had, however, been busily occupied in the course of the summer in taking
up many of the towns which the treason of Anjou had laid open to his
attacks.

Eindhoven, Diest, Dunkirk, Newport, and other places, were successively