sionate spectator. Having learnt in May, 1558, that the doctrines of the Reformation had penetrated into Andalusia and Castille, he instantly wrote to his daughter, the Infanta Doña Juana, regent of the kingdom in the absence of Philip II. :

'Believe me, my daughter, that this affair causes me no small care, and brings me more grief than I can express, to see that these kingdoms were perfectly tranquil and exempt from such a calamity during the absence of the King and my own, but that now I am come hither to enter into my rest and to serve our Lord, so monstrous and insolent an abomination should break forth in my presence and your own, when I well know what toils and grief I have endured on this account in Germany, to the not small risk of my salvation. Assuredly if I were not certain that you and the members of the Council who are about you will extirpate this evil to the root, I know not if I could resolve to remain here and not go forth myself to remedy the evil.'*

Four months afterwards, and a few days before his death, whilst adding a codicil to his will, he addressed to the King, his son, these last words:

'I command him as a father, and upon the obedience due to me, carefully to pursue and chastise the heretics with all the severity and vigour which their crime deserves, without allowing any guilty person to escape, and without regard to the prayers, the rank, and condition of any man: and in order that these my intentions may have their full and entire effect, I recommend him everywhere to protect the holy office of the Inquisition; thus will he deserve that our Lord will ensure the prosperity of his reign, will guide him in all his doings, and protect him against his enemies for my greater consolation.'†

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Philip obeyed the behest of his father to a degree which Charles V. himself would doubtless never have attained. chastisement and extirpation of heresy, - the maintenance, the restoration or the extension, by fire and by the sword, of the unity of the faith, was the object of his constant and devouring anxiety, the rule and standard of his policy abroad as well as at home, in his family as well as in his dominions. There lay his entire history. We care not to linger over the uninviting spectacle; but one or two scenes may be recorded which disclose, with a malignant brightness, what the mind of such a man, and the government of such a King, became under the sway of the fixed and fatal idea that possessed him.

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* Recueil de Lettres inédites tirées des Archives de Simancas,' par M. Gachard, tom. i. p. 297. Brussels: 1854.

† Sandoval, Vida del Emperador Carlos V. en Yuste,' vol. ii. p. 829.

On the 29th of August 1559, Philip returned from Flanders to Spain; it was the first time he had set foot in that kingdom since his father had resigned the sceptre to his grasp. He was in that flush of fortune and of satisfaction which Providence not unfrequently bestows on new-made kings. The war he had been compelled to wage in Italy against the Pope himself, sorely in his own despite, but from which the fiery Italian patriotism of Paul IV. had not allowed him to escape, had just been happily and moderately brought to a close. Against the king of France, his two generals, Emmanuel Phillibert of Savoy and the Count Egmont, had just gained the brilliant victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines. He had employed this success to conclude the peace of Cateau Cambresis, and to marry the daughter of Henry II., the Princess Elizabeth de Valois, a charming girl of fifteen, who was to arrive a few months later in the Spanish territories. To celebrate meanwhile these auspicious events Philip resolved to hold a high festival with his people and his court.

On the 8th of October, barely six weeks after the King's arrival, an amphitheatre was raised upon the public square, before the Church of St. Francis at Valladolid. At six o'clock in the morning the bells of all the churches pealed forth. A solemn procession issued from the prisons of the Inquisition. Thirty prisoners came first; by the side of each of them two familiars of the Holy Office; and to fourteen of the number two attendant friars. Of these prisoners some were simply clad in black; others were muffled in a sack of yellow frieze, their heads covered with a conical cap, and upon this strange garb figures of devils and of flames were embroidered in gaudy colours. After them came the magistrates of the city, the civil judges, the clergy, the hidalgos on their steeds; and these were followed by the members of the Sacred Office itself, preceded by the arms of the Inquisition blazoned on a standard of crimson damask. Behind this procession rushed a mighty multitude of people, assembled from far and near to see the king on his throne and the heretics at the stake. It is stated by an eye-witness that not less than 200,000 persons were gathered together that day in Valladolid. The Inquisitors took their seats. Upon a platform raised hard by the king sate, accompanied by his sister, the Infanta Doña Juana, his son Don Carlos, his nephew Alexander Farnese, afterwards Prince of Parma, and followed by the foreign ambassadors and the nobles of his court. Fronting this royal gallery rose a gigantic scaffold, to be seen from every part of that vast square. The assembly being complete, the Bishop of Zamora preached a sermon, called the Sermon of the

Faith. The preaching having ceased, the Grand Inquisitor, Ferdinand Valdes, Archbishop of Seville, approached the king, who rose from his throne, and drew his sword. Your majesty 'swears,' said the prelate, by the cross of that sword now resting in your royal hands, to give to the Holy Office of the Inquisition all necessary aid against heretics, and apostates, ' and all those who may favour the same, and to cause whomso'ever shall act or speak against the Faith to be sought out and brought to justice.' 'I swear,' replied Philip, making the sign of the Cross, which was instantly repeated by the whole assembly. The thirty prisoners were brought forth. Their sentence was read. Sixteen of them were reconciled,— that is, condemned either to a perpetual or a temporary imprisonment, with the confiscation of all their property. These knelt down and abjured their errors. The fourteen others, being condemned to death, were immediately consigned to the stake. Those from whom the horror of that awful moment wrung any expressions of penitence obtained the favour of a speedier death by strangulation before their bodies were cast into the flames. Of the whole number two only sternly refused every form of recantation-a Dominican monk, one Domingo Roxas, son of the Marquis of Posa, and a Florentine gentleman, Don Carlos di Seso, who had long been a favourite of Charles V. As they mounted the pile of faggots, the Dominican sought to address the people: the King indignantly ordered him to be gagged, and the gag closed his mouth till his last moment, being burnt with the victim. The Florentine Seso, as he passed before the royal balcony on his way to the stake, exclaimed, Can your majesty ⚫ attend in person to see your innocent subjects burnt before 'your eyes ?' If it were my own son,' replied Philip, I would bring the wood to burn him an he were such a wretch as thou 'art. Having begun at six o'clock in the morning, the ceremony was not terminated until two in the afternoon. This was the second auto-de-fé for the immolation of Protestants.

Such were, in the most brilliant days of that reign, the festivities of Philip II., and such were the graces with which he mingled in the pastime.

As he acted, felt, and spoke on that 8th of October 1559, so he acted, felt, and spoke during his whole life. War on heretics or the pursuit of heretics was his work; the autos-de-fé were his triumphs. Better not to reign at all,' said he, than to reign ' over heretics. I would sacrifice a hundred thousand lives, if I 'had them, rather than submit to a single change in matters of religion.' When Count Egmont came to Madrid in 1564, to present the remonstrances of the nobility of Flanders against

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his rigour, Philip convoked an assembly of theologians, and laid before them the state of the Low Countries, which were grievously agitated and loud in their demands for freedom of conscience. Upon the supposition that the King was seeking to mask certain concessions under the authority of their opinion, these doctors at first reported that, in consideration of the 'critical condition of the Flemish provinces and the imminent danger that a refusal might drive the population to open revolt against the Crown, and to the entire abandonment of the Church, the King might reasonably grant them that liberty of worship which they desired.' I did not call you here,' said the King, 'to know whether I could, but whether I ought, to grant this to the Flemings.' The answer of the doctors then became absolutely negative, and Philip falling on his knees before a crucifix placed in the chamber, exclaimed: Sovereign 'Master of all things, keep me fast in the resolution I now am in,-- never to become, never to be called, the lord of those who reject thee as their Lord.' All that could be obtained from him was the formation in the Low Countries of a commission of three bishops and three jurists charged to examine, together with the Council of Flanders, the grievances and the desires of the people. In July 1565, this commission sent its report to Madrid: it recommended the continuance of all the measures of severity, proposing only that in case of the recantation of convicted heretics, the punishment of death might be commuted by the judges into banishment. Philip approved the report with the exception of this power of mitigation, which he absolutely refused to vest in the judges; and three months afterwards, on the 17th and 20th of October 1565, he announced to his sister, the Regent Margaret of Parma, his final resolution not to grant to the Low Countries, either in government or in religion, any of the changes they solicited, but especially no convocation of the States in the Provinces, and no limitation of the powers of the Inquisition. When these letters were read in the Council at Brussels, and their publication resolved on, The time is come,' said the Prince of Orange, as he left the room, when we shall see the beginning of a rare tragedy.'

That tragedy did indeed begin in the following spring, by the resistance of the aristocracy, at once directing and restraining the excitement of the people. The 'Gueux' of 1566 had for their acknowledged chiefs, or for their scarcely disguised patrons, such men as Prince William of Orange, his brothers the Counts Louis and Adolphus of Nassau, the Counts of Egmont, of Horn, of Brederode, the first nobles of the land, most of them still Catholics, but leagued together to regain their ancient political

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liberties as well as some toleration for those of the reformed faith, and thus proudly accepting this name of Gueux,' which the Spanish councillors had flung at them in scorn, and themselves causing medals to be struck to perpetuate it. At this explosion, begun by such leaders and resounding through the land, Philip paused for a moment with anxiety: he wrote to the Prince of Orange, who wished to retire from the Council, 'You are much mistaken if you think that I have not full confidence in you; if any one attempted to injure you in my esteem, I 'should not be so idle as to lend him an ear, I who have so ' often tried your loyalty and your services.' Soon afterwards, on the 31st of July 1566, he addressed somewhat milder instructions to his sister, the Regent: Through the natural incli'nation I have ever had to treat my vassals and subjects by the 'means of clemency and love rather than by fear and severity, I have given my assent to all it was possible for me to admit.' He had, in fact, assented to the abolition of the Holy Office in the Low Countries, and agreed that the bishops alone should exercise the powers of Inquisitors. But at the very time he despatched these concessions to Brussels, he sent for a notary to his palace at Madrid, and in presence of the Duke of Alva and two doctors of laws, he declared, That not having made these ' concessions freely or spontaneously, he held himself not to be 'bound by them;' and three days later, on the 12th of August 1566, he ordered his ambassador at Rome, Don Luis of Requesens, to tell the Pope Pius V., That in the matter of the 'abolition of the Holy Office he felt it would have been right 'to consult his Holiness, but that time was wanting, from the importunity of the people of Flanders for a speedy decision; ' and, perhaps,' added he, it is better it should be thus, since the 'abolition of the Holy Office can be of no effect unless it be 'ratified by the Pope who established it; but on all this matter 'it will be well to be secret.'

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Philip was not aware that, in spite of all his precautions and his power, his secrets were almost always known to his most formidable opponent. The cause of the Reformation and of freedom in the Low Countries, fortunately possessed as its chief not only an illustrious nobleman, but a courtier and a man of the world, who had partaken in all the pleasures, and who was familiar with all the relations and intrigues of society,not less skilful to unravel the mazes of a palace than to direct the debates of council or the strife of civil war. Whilst he laboured to set bounds to an iniquitous despotism, and to restrain or even to repress an irritated people, William of Orange foresaw the failure of this twofold resistance, and steadily look