This profligate fanatic, who had married no less than seventeen women, had gained considerable influence over the insensate multitude; but he was at length taken and imprisoned in an iron cage--an event which undeceived the greater number of those whom he had persuaded of his superhuman powers.
The prosperity of the southern provinces proceeded rapidly and uninterruptedly, in consequence of the great and valuable traffic of the merchants of Flanders and Brabant, who exchanged their goods of native manufacture for the riches drawn from America and India by the Spaniards and Portuguese.

Antwerp had succeeded to Bruges as the general mart of commerce, and was the most opulent town of the north of Europe.

The expenses, estimated at one hundred and thirty thousand golden crowns, which this city voluntarily incurred, to do honor to the visit of Philip, son of Charles V., are cited as a proof of its wealth.

The value of the wool annually imported for manufacture into the Low Countries from England and Spain was calculated at four million pieces of gold.
Their herring fishery was unrivalled; for even the Scotch, on whose coasts these fish were taken, did not attempt a competition with the Zealanders.

But the chief seat of prosperity was the south.