themselves to the charge of having in no very covert manner lent their
sanction to the enterprise of the confederates. In compliance,
therefore, with their advice, it was determined to present their address
unarmed, and in the form of a petition, and a day was appointed on which
they should assemble in Brussels.

The first intimation the regent received of this conspiracy of the
nobles was given by the Count of Megen soon after his return to the
capital. "There was," he said, "an enterprise on foot; no less than
three hundred of the nobles were implicated in it; it referred to
religion; the members of it had bound themselves together by an oath;
they reckoned much on foreign aid; she would soon know more about it."
Though urgently pressed, he would give her no further information.
"A nobleman," he said, "had confided it to him under the seal of
secrecy, and he had pledged his word of honor to him." What really
withheld him from giving her any further explanation was, in all
probability, not so much any delicacy about his honor, as his hatred
of the Inquisition, which he would not willingly do anything to advance.
Soon after him, Count Egmont delivered to the regent a copy of the
covenant, and also gave her the names of the conspirators, with some few
exceptions. Nearly about the same time the Prince of Orange wrote to
her: "There was, as he had heard, an army enlisted, four hundred
officers were already named, and twenty thousand men would presently
appear in arms." Thus the rumor was intentionally exaggerated, and the
danger was multiplied in every mouth.

The regent, petrified with alarm at the first announcement of these
tidings, and guided solely by her fears, hastily called together all the
members of the council of state who happened to be then in Brussels, and
at the same time sent a pressing summons to the Prince of Orange and