Accordingly at Maestricht, March 15, 1581, "a ban and edict in form of proscription" was published against the prince, who was denounced as "a traitor and miscreant, an enemy of ourselves and of our country"; and all and everywhere empowered "to seize the person and goods of this William of Nassau, as enemy of the human race." A solemn promise was also made "to anyone who has the heart to free us of this pest, and who will deliver him dead or alive, or take his life, the sum of 25,000 crowns in gold or in estates for himself and his heirs; and we will pardon him any crimes of which he has been guilty, and give him a patent of nobility, if he be not noble." It is a document which, however abhorrent or loathsome it may appear to us, was characteristic of the age in which it was promulgated and in accordance with the ideas of that cruel time.

The ban was a declaration of war to the knife, and as such it was received and answered.
In reply to the ban the prince at the close of the year (December 13) published a very lengthy defence of his life and actions, the famous _Apology_.

To William himself is undoubtedly due the material which the document embodies and the argument it contains, but it was almost certainly not written by him, but by his chaplain, Pierre L'Oyseleur, Seigneur de Villiers, to whom it owes its rather ponderous prolixity and redundant verbiage.

Historically it is of very considerable value, though the facts are not always to be relied upon as strictly accurate.
The _Apology_ was translated into several languages and distributed to the leading personages in every neighbouring country, and made a deep impression on men's minds.
The combined effect of the _Ban_ and _the Apology_ was to strengthen William's position in all the provinces where the patriot party still held the upper hand; and he was not slow to take advantage of the strong anti-Spanish feeling which was aroused.

Its intensity was shown by the solemn Act of Abjuration, July 26, 1581, by which the provinces of Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht and Gelderland renounced their allegiance to Philip II on the ground of his tyranny and misrule.
But after signing this Act it never seems to have occurred to the prince or to the representatives of the provinces, that these now derelict territories could remain without a personal sovereign.