History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce, 1584Motley, John Lothrop
History
History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce, 1584
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
She did not enter their houses to
disturb their private religious ceremonies, or to inquire into their
consciences. This was milder treatment than the burning alive, burying
alive, hanging, and drowning, which had been dealt out to the English and
the Netherland heretics by Philip and by Mary, but it was not the spirit
which William the Silent had been wont to manifest in his measures
towards Anabaptists and Papists alike. Moreover, the Prince could hardly
forget that of the nine thousand four hundred Catholic ecclesiastics who
held benefices at the death of Queen Mary, all had renounced the Pope on
the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and acknowledged her as the head of the
church, saving only one hundred and eighty-nine individuals. In the
hearts of the nine thousand two hundred and eleven others, it might be
thought perhaps that some tenderness for the religion from which they had
so suddenly been converted, might linger, while it could hardly be hoped
that they would seek to inculcate in the minds of their flocks or of
their sovereign any connivance with the doctrines of Geneva.
When, at a later period, the plotting of Catholics, suborned by the Pope
and Philip, against the throne and person of the Queen, made more
rigorous measures necessary; when it was thought indispensable to execute
as traitors those Roman seedlings--seminary priests and their disciples--
who went about preaching to the Queen's subjects the duty of carrying out
the bull by which the Bishop of Rome had deposed and excommunicated their
sovereign, and that "it was a meritorious act to kill such princes as
were excommunicate," even then, the men who preached and practised
treason and murder experienced no severer treatment than that which other
"heretics" had met with at the Queen's hands. Jesuits and Popish priests
were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the realm within forty
days. Those who should afterwards return to the kingdom were to be held
guilty of high treason. Students in the foreign seminaries were
commanded to return within six months and recant, or be held guilty of
high treason. Parents and guardians supplying money to such students
abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire--perpetual exile,
namely, with loss of all their goods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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