His own government of Holland and Zeland, too, especially demanded his care.

The field-preaching had spread in that region with prodigious rapidity.

Armed assemblages, utterly beyond the power of the civil authorities, were taking place daily in the neighborhood of Amsterdam.

Yet the Duchess could not allow him to visit his government in the north.

If he could be spared from Antwerp for a day, it was necessary that he should aid her in a fresh complication with the confederated nobles in the very midst, therefore, of his Antwerp labors, he had been obliged, by Margaret's orders, to meet a committee at Duffel.