History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

other was heard the muttered thunder of a nation's
wrath.[6]
Rocked thus on the great billows, the Duchess
of Parma wrote to her brother, letting him know
how difficult and dangerous her position had
become, and craving his advice as to how she
ought to steer amid tempests so fierce, and every
hour growing fiercer. Philip replied that the edicts
must ever be her beacon-lights. Philip's will was
unalterably fixed on the extirpation of heresy in his
kingdom of the Netherlands, and that will must be
the duchess's pole-star. Nevertheless, the tyrant
was pleased to set his wits to work, and to devise a
method by which the flagrancy, but not the cruelty,
of the persecution might be abated. Instead of
bringing forth the heretic, and beheading or
burning him at midday, he was to be put to death in
his prison at midnight. The mode of execution was
as simple as it was barbarous. The head of the
prisoner was tied between his knees with a rope,
and he was then thrown into a large tub full of
water, kept in the prison for that use. This Christian
invention is said to have been the original device of
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