e of Ghent.

On this same day, two other important arrests, included and arranged in
the same program, had been successfully accomplished. Bakkerzeel, private
and confidential secretary of Egmont, and Antony Van Straalen, the rich
and influential burgomaster of Antwerp, were taken almost simultaneously.
At the request of Alva, the burgomaster had been invited by the Duchess
of Parma to repair on business to Brussels. He seemed to have feared an
ambuscade, for as he got into his coach to set forth upon the journey, he
was so muffed in a multiplicity of clothing, that he was scarcely to be
recognized. He was no sooner, however, in the open country and upon a
spot remote from human habitations, than he was suddenly beset by a band
of forty soldiers under command of Don Alberic Lodron and Don Sancho de
Lodrono. These officers had been watching his movements for many days.
The capture of Bakkerzeel was accomplished with equal adroitness at about
the same hour.

Alva, while he sat at the council board with Egmont and Horn, was
secretly informed that those important personages, Bakkerzeel and
Straalen, with the private secretary of the Admiral, Alonzo de la Loo, in
addition, had been thus successfully arrested. He could with difficulty
conceal his satisfaction, and left the apartment immediately that the
trap might be sprung upon the two principal victims of his treachery. He
had himself arranged all the details of these two important arrests,
while his natural son, the Prior Don Ferdinando, had been compelled to
superintend the proceedings. The plot had been an excellent plot, and was
accomplished as successfully as it bad been sagaciously conceived. None
but Spaniards had been employed in any part of the affair. Officers of
high rank in his Majesty's army had performed the part of spies and
policemen with much adroitness, nor was it to be expected that the duty
would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the Knights of Saint John was
superintendent of the operations, when the Captain-General of the
Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when all, from subaltern to
viceroy, had received minute instructions as to the contemplated
treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police, who sat on the
throne of Castile and Aragon.

No sooner were these gentlemen in custody than the secretary Albornoz was
dispatched to the house of Count Horn, and to that of Bakkerzeel, where
all papers were immediately seized, inventoried, an