It furnished plausible excuses for many lukewarm friends of their cause to withdraw from all connection with it.

Egmont denounced the proceedings as highly flagitious, and busied himself with punishing the criminals in Flanders.

The Regent was beside herself with indignation and terror.

Philip, when he heard the news, fell into a paroxysm of frenzy.

"It shall cost them dear!" he cried, as he tore his beard for rage; "it shall cost them dear! I swear it by the soul of my father!" The Reformation in the Netherlands, by the fury of these fanatics, was thus made apparently to abandon the high ground upon which it had stood in the early summer.