d from Montgomery in a tournay held to
celebrate the conclusion of the treaty, and Catherine de Medici became
Queen-Regent of France, and deferred carrying out the secret plot till
St. Bartholomew's Day fourteen years after.

_II.--The Netherlands Are, and Will Be, Free_

Philip now set about the organisation of the Netherlands provinces.
Margaret, Duchess of Parma, was appointed regent, with three boards, a
state council, a privy council, and a council of finance, to assist in
the government. It soon became evident that the real power of the
government was exclusively in the hands of the Consulta--a committee of
three members of the state council, by whose deliberation the regent was
secretly to be guided on all important occasions; but in reality the
conclave consisted of Anthony Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, afterwards
Cardinal Granvelle. Stadtholders were appointed to the different
provinces, of whom only Count Egmont for Flanders and William of Orange
for Holland need be mentioned.

An assembly of the Estates met at Ghent on August 7, 1589, to receive
the parting instructions of Philip previous to his departure for Spain.
The king, in a speech made through the Bishop of Arras, owing to his
inability to speak French or Flemish, submitted a "request" for three
million gold florins "to be spent for the good of the country." He made
a violent attack on "the new, reprobate and damnable sects that now
infested the country," and commanded the Regent Margaret "accurately and
exactly to cause to be enforced the edicts and decrees made for the
extirpation of all sects and heresies." The Estates of all the provinces
agreed, at a subsequent meeting with the king, to grant their quota of
the "request," but made it a condition precedent that the foreign
troops, whose outrages and exactions had long been an intolerable
burden, should be withdrawn. This enraged the king, but when a
presentation was made of a separate remonstrance in the name of the
States-General, signed by the Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, and other
leading patricians, against the pillaging, insults, and disorders of the
foreign soldiers, the king was furious. He, however, dissembled at a
later meeting, and took leave of the Estates with apparent cordiality.

Inspired by the Bishop of Arras, under secret instructions from Philip,
the Regent Margaret resumed the execution of the edicts against heresies
and heretics which had been permitted to slacken during