There were none so humble as to be forbidden to approach him, none so ignorant as not to know his deeds.

All knew that to combat in their cause he had descended from princely station, from luxurious ease, to the position of a proscribed and almost beggared outlaw.

For them he had impoverished himself and his family, mortgaged his estates, stripped himself of jewels, furniture, almost of food and raiment.
Through his exertions the Spaniards had been banished from their little territory, the Inquisition crushed within their borders, nearly all the sister provinces but yesterday banded into a common cause.
He found time, notwithstanding congratulating crowds who thronged his footsteps, to direct the labors of the states-general, who still looked more than ever to his guidance, as their relations with Don John became more complicated and unsatisfactory.

In a letter addressed to them, on the 20th of June from Harlem, he warned them most eloquently to hold to the Ghent Pacification as to their anchor in the storm.

He assured them, if it was, torn from them, that their destruction was inevitable.