[267] Gachard, Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, Prince d’Orange, ii. 110.
[268] It is said that William’s reticence on hearing this news, which moved him so much, gained him the name of “The Silent” (le taciturne): it is more probable that the soubriquet was given to him by Cardinal de Granvelle.
[269] Maurice succeeded his father as Stadtholder, and became Prince of Orange in 1618 on the death of his elder brother, Philip William, who was kidnapped from Louvain and brought up as a Roman Catholic by Philip II. William was married four times:
a. In 1550, to Anne of Egmont, only child of Maximilian of Buren. Her son was Philip William; she died in March 1558.
b. In 1561, to Anne, daughter of the Elector Maurice of Saxony, and granddaughter of Philip of Hesse. She early developed symptoms of incipient insanity, which came to a height when she deserted her husband in 1567 and went to live a disreputable life in Cologne. She became insane, and her family seized her and imprisoned her until she died in 1573. She was the mother of Maurice.
c. In 1571, Charlotte de Bourbon, daughter of the Due de Montpensier. She had been a nun, had embraced the Reformed faith, and fled to Germany. The marriage was a singularly happy one. She was scarcely recovered from childbirth when William was almost killed by Jaureguy, and the shock, combined with her incessant toil in nursing her husband, was too much for her strength; she died in 1582 (May 5th).
d. In 1583, to Louise de Coligny, daughter of the celebrated Admiral Coligny. She had lost both her parents in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. She was a wonderful and charming woman, beloved by her stepchildren and adored by her adopted country; she survived her husband forty years.
[270] Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, 2nd ed. (London, 1903), pp. 198, 204f., 259, 330 n., 339.
[271] Müller, Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformirten Kirche (Leipzig, 1903), p. 233; Schaff, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, 383.
[272] Ibid. p. 682.