Matters like these filled the whole soul of Philip, swelled the bills of indictment for thousands of higher and better men than Brederode, and furnished occupation as well for secret correspondents and spies as for the most dignified functionaries of Government.

Capons or sausages on Good Friday, the Psalms of Clement Marot, the Sermon on the Mount in the vernacular, led to the rack, the gibbet, and the stake, but ushered in a war against the inquisition which was to last for eighty years.

Brederode was not to be the hero of that party which he disgraced by his buffoonery.

Had he lived, he might, perhaps, like many of his confederates, have redeemed, by his bravery in the field, a character which his orgies had rendered despicable.

He now left Antwerp for the north of Holland, where, as he soon afterwards reported to Count Louis, "the beggars were as numerous as the sands on the seashore." His "nephew Charles," two months afterwards, obeyed his father's injunction, and withdrew formally from the confederacy.
Meantime the rumor had gone abroad that the Request of the nobles had already produced good fruit, that the edicts were to be mitigated, the inquisition abolished, liberty of conscience eventually to prevail.