For more than a century after the Reformation, religion was the real
or apparent motive of the most remarkable transactions in European
history. It is scarcely necessary to point out that this sentiment,
though in general the purest by which human beings can be actuated,
is, like all the other higher sentiments of our nature, when offended
or shocked, capable of rousing the inferior sentiments into great
activity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European society
was comparatively unenlightened and barbarous; we therefore find the
variances of opinion respecting religion were then productive of far
fiercer feelings than they are in our own more humane age. The
Protestant heresy, as it was termed by the Catholics, was also a
novelty, the remote effects of which no man could foretell; it was
mingled with political questions, and by some princes was supposed to
forebode a general revolt against monarchical authority. We are not
therefore to wonder that great cruelties were committed, either by the
Catholics in seeking to support the church of Rome, or by the
Protestants in endeavoring to insure themselves against a renewal of
severities inflicted by the opposite party. Nor is it necessary, in
the present age, that the adherents of either faith should retain any
feeling of displeasure against the other, on account of barbarities
which took their rise in the ignorance and rudeness of a former
period, and of which the enlightened of both parties have long since
disapproved.
In the Netherlands, which formed part of the dominions of Philip II of
Spain, the reformed faith had made considerable advances. Philip, like
other Catholic princes, entertained the idea that this new creed,
besides being condemnable as a heresy and an offense against the
Deity, tended to make men independent of their rulers. Finding the
people obstinate in their professions, he commenced a war with the
Netherlanders, for the purpose of enforcing his authority over their
consciences. This war lasted about twenty years; for the
Netherlanders, though a nation of no great strength, fought like
desperate men, and endured the most dreadful hardships rather than
submit. The chief leader in this war of liberty was William, Prince of
Orange, one of the purest and most courageous patriots that ever
breathed. Elizabeth could not help wishing well to the Netherlanders,
though for a long time her dread of Spain, then one of the greatest
powers in Europe, prevented her from openly assisting them. At the
same time, about two millions of the people of France were
Protestants, or, as they were then called, Huguenots, who acted also
for the general Protestant cause with as much energy as the great
strength of the French government would permit. Elizabeth at length,
in 1578, extended an open protection to the Netherlanders, excusing
herself to Philip by stating her fear that they would otherwise throw
themselves into the arms of France. The northern provinces were thus
enabled to assert their independence, and to constitute the country
which has since been called Holland.