He opened a fresh correspondence with many leading gentlemen in Brussels and other places in the Netherlands; persons of influence, who now, for the first time, showed a disposition to side with their country against its tyrants.

Hitherto the land had been divided into two very unequal portions.

Holland and Zealand were devoted to the Prince; their whole population, with hardly an individual exception, converted to the Reformed religion.

The other fifteen provinces were, on the whole, loyal to the King; while the old religion had, of late years, taken root so rapidly again, that perhaps a moiety of their population might be considered as Catholic.

At the same time, the reign of terror under Alva, the paler, but not less distinct tyranny of Requesens, and the intolerable excesses of the foreign soldiery, by which the government of foreigners was supported, had at last maddened all the inhabitants of the seventeen provinces.