As time went on, and Granvelle became more unpopular about the bishoprics, he referred less and less to the council, and in July 1561 Orange and Egmont wrote to the king resigning their seats and complaining bitterly. They had, they said, to bear a share of the unpopularity of the measures adopted, but had no part in controlling the policy of the Government. To this Philip returned, as was usual with him, a temporising answer. He would, he said, consider the matter and reply at length when Count Horn returned from Madrid to Flanders. Horn’s mission to Flanders was to endeavour to reconcile Granvelle with the nobles, but this was a well-nigh impossible task. It was said that the cardinal and his parasites were plundering right and left, whilst public officers were unpaid and the treasury empty, that he was trying to substitute the unobnoxious inquisition of the Netherlands by the terrible tribunal of Spain, which certainly was not true, and that his arrogance and tyranny had become unbearable. Granvelle indeed was the scapegoat, and had become hateful both to the nobles and to “that perverse animal called the people,” to use his own words. So Horn’s mission was too late, like most of Philip’s attempts at conciliation, and in the spring of 1562 Orange petitioned the Regent Margaret to convoke the States-General. The regent herself, though full of praise for the cardinal in her letters to Philip, had no desire to share his unpopularity, and consented to summon, not the States-General, but a Chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, or in effect the high nobility of Flanders. The pretext for the assembly was that Philip had sent orders that a force of men should be raised in Flanders to be sent to the aid of the Catholic party in France, now in the midst of their first struggle with the Huguenots. The discontented Flemish nobles were in no humour to aid in this, and before the assembly Orange held a private meeting of them, to press upon them the undesirability of allowing Granvelle to have the disposal of troops. This was known to the regent, and she dismissed the assembly as soon as possible, an arrangement being settled for sending a money subsidy to the French Catholics instead of an armed force. But before the nobles separated they decided to send as a delegate to Philip one of their number, Florence de Montmorenci, Baron de Montigny, the brother of Count Horn, to represent to the king the unsatisfactory state of the country with regard to religion and the public finances. He and his brother were Catholics, but firm upholders of the autonomy of the States. Before he left, religious matters were indeed in a disturbed condition. Hainhault, on the French border, with its great commerce and industry in the cities of Tournai, and Valenciennes especially, had largely accepted the Protestant faith from the neighbouring French Calvinists. Philip urged his sister to severity against them, but the magistrates, themselves