Berghen avoids the persecution of heretics, wrote the Cardinal again, a month later, to Secretary Perez.

He has gone to Spa for his health, although those who saw him last say he is fat and hearty.
Granvelle added, however, that they had at last "burned one more preacher alive." The heretic, he stated, had feigned repentance to save his life, but finding that, at any rate, his head would be cut off as a dogmatizer, he retracted his recantation.

"So," concluded the Cardinal, complacently, "they burned him." He chronicled the sayings and doings of the principal personages in the Netherlands, for the instruction of the King, with great regularity, insinuating suspicions when unable to furnish evidence, and adding charitable apologies, which he knew would have but small effect upon the mind of his correspondent.

Thus he sent an account of a "very secret meeting" held by Orange, Egmont, Horn, Montigny and Berghen, at the abbey of La Forest, near Brussels, adding, that he did not know what they had been doing there, and was at loss what to suspect.

He would be most happy, he said, to put the best interpretation upon their actions, but he could not help remembering with great sorrow the observation so recently made by Orange to Montigny, that one day they should be stronger.