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under pain of our royal indignation. And, in execution of this Declaration, we empower all and every to seize the person and the goods of this William of Nassau, as enemy of the human race; and hereby, on the word of a king and as minister of God, we promise to any one who has the heart to free us of this pest, and who will deliver him dead or alive, or take his life, the sum of 25,000 crowns in gold or in estates for himself and his heirs; we will pardon him any crime if he has been guilty, and give him a patent of nobility, if he be not noble, and we will do the same for all accomplices and agents. And we shall hold all who shall disobey this order as rebels, and will visit them with pains and penalties. And, lastly, we give command to all our governors to have this Declaration published in all parts of our said Provinces.

In due course the Prince caused to be drawn up and published his reply, the famous Apology, his official defence of his whole life and career. The document covers more than one hundred pages of close print. It is rhetorical and diffuse, and apparently modelled on the orations of Cicero by a learned and eloquent scholar. The hand of an ecclesiastical scribe is as evident in it as in the Ban itself. It was said to be drawn by de Villiers, an eminent Protestant divine and once an advocate, now William's chaplain. The Prince himself composed the argument throughout, and certainly is responsible for it as a whole.

The Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau and so forth, etc., etc., Lieutenant-General in the Low Countries and Governor of Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland, and Admiral thereof, to the States-General Greeting:— I take it as a signal honour that I am the mark of the cruel and barbarous proscription hurled at me by the Spaniard for undertaking your cause and that of freedom and independence; and for this I am called traitor, heretic, hypocrite, foreigner, rebel, enemy of the human race, and I am to be killed like a wild beast, with a price offered to my assassins. I am no foreigner here, no rebel, no traitor. My princedom, which I hold in absolute sovereignty, and all my baronies, fiefs, and inheritances in Burgundy, and in