History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

to all offices; he disposed of all affairs; and all the
revenues of the kingdom were paid to him for
national uses, and especially for the prosecution of
the great struggle in which he was engaged for the
nation's independence. These revenues, given
spontaneously, were larger by far than the sums
which Alva by all his taxation and terror had been
able to extort from the Provinces. William, in fact,
possessed more than the powers of a king. The
States had unbounded trust in his wisdom, his
patriotism, and his uprightness, and they
committed all into his hands.
They saw in him a sublime example of
devotion to his country, and of abnegation of all
ambitions, save the one ambition of maintaining
the Protestant religion and the freedom of Holland.
They knew that he sought neither title, nor power,
nor wealth, and that in him was perpetuated that
order of men to which Luther and Calvin belonged
-- men not merely of prodigious talents, but what is
infinitely more rare, of heroic faith and
magnanimous souls; and so "King of Holland"
appeared to them a weak title -- they called him the
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