He protested that he should have liked to treat Papists and Calvinists "with indifference," but that it had proved impossible; that the Catholics were perpetually plotting with the Spanish faction, and that no towns were safe except those in which Papists had been excluded from office.

"They love the Pope above all," he said, "and the Prince of Parma hath continual intelligence with them." Nor was it Catholics alone who gave the governor trouble.

He was likewise very busy in putting down other denominations that differed from the Calvinists.

"Your Majesty will not believe," he said, "the number of sects that are in most towns; especially Anabaptists, Families of Love, Georgians; and I know not what.

The godly and good ministers were molested by them in many places, and ready to give over; and even such diversities grew among magistrates in towns, being caused by some sedition-sowers here." It is however, satisfactory to reflect that the anabaptists and families of love, although discouraged and frowned upon, were not burned alive, buried alive, drowned in dungeons, and roasted at slow fires, as had been the case with them and with every other species of Protestants, by thousands and tens of thousands, so long as Charles V.
and Philip II.