kept of the numbers in the open country who fell into the hands of the provost-marshal and were immediately strung up as miscreants, without trial and without mercy. The regent was still in Antwerp when ambassadors presented themselves from the Electors of Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemberg, and Baden to intercede for their fugitive brethren in the faith. The expelled preachers of the Augsburg Confession had claimed the rights assured to them by the religious peace of the Germans, in which Brabant, as part of the empire, participated, and had thrown themselves on the protection of those princes. The arrival of the foreign ministers alarmed the regent, and she vainly endeavored to prevent their entrance into Antwerp; under the guise, however, of showing them marks of honor, she continued to keep them closely watched lest they should encourage the malcontents in any attempts against the peace of the town. From the high tone which they most unreasonably adopted towards the regent it might almost be inferred that they were little in earnest in their demand. "It was but reasonable," they said, "that the Confession of Augsburg, as the only one which met the spirit of the gospel, should be the ruling faith in the Netherlands; but to persecute it by such cruel edicts as were in force was positively unnatural and could not be allowed. They therefore required of the regent, in the name of religion, not to treat the people entrusted to her rule with such severity." She replied through the Count of Staremberg, her minister for German affairs, that such an exordium deserved no answer at all. From the sympathy which the German princes had shown for the Belgian fugitives it was clear that they gave less credit to the letters of the king, in explanation of his measures, than to the reports of a few worthless wretches who, in the desecrated churches, had left behind them a worthier memorial of their acts and characters. It would far more become them to leave to the King of Spain the care of his own subjects, and abandon the attempt to foster a spirit of rebellion in foreign countries, from which they would reap neither honor nor profit. The ambassadors left Antwerp in a few days without having effected anything. The Saxon minister, indeed, in a private interview with the regent even assured her that his master had most reluctantly taken this step.