The pure Erasmians, under Cassander, advocated tolerance.

More pronounced was the movement of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornheert [Sidenote: Coornheert, 1522-90] a merchant of Amsterdam who, in addition to advising his followers to dissimulate their views rather than to court martyrdom, rejected the Calvinist dogma of predestination and tried to lay the emphasis in religion on the spirit of Jesus rather than on either dogma or ritual.
Though the undertow was slowly but surely carrying the Low Countries adrift from Spain, for the moment their new monarch, then at the age of twenty-eight, seemed to have the winds and waves of politics all in his favor.

He was at peace with France; he had nothing to fear from Germany; his marriage with Mary of England made that country, always the best trader with the Netherlands, an ally.

His first steps were to relieve Mary of Hungary of her regency and to give it to Emanuel Philibert, to issue a new edict against heresy and to give permission to the Jesuits to enter the Low Countries.

[Sidenote: 1556] The chief difficulties were financial.