The new Sovereign had been born and bred in Castile, and despite his Flemish ancestry and his Flemish face he was a true Castilian. Of course he knew nothing

BY THE DYLE AT MECHLIN.

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of Flemish, and he either could not or would not speak French: he was as much a foreigner in the Low Countries as his father had been in Spain. Like him, he had the instincts and the inclinations of a despot; but whereas Charles delighted to mix with his fellow-men and, when he would, could win their affection, Philip was cold, grave, aloof, and kept even the highest of his Court nobles at arm's length; nor were the Netherlanders sorry when, four years after his inauguration, he bade them farewell. But if they imagined that their Sovereign's fingers were not long enough to reach them from Madrid, in this they were mistaken, as presently they learned to their cost, for it was no vain boast when Philip said that 'everywhere in the vast compass of his dominions he was an absolute King.'

The native aristocracy was indeed represented in the Council of State, but there were foreign councillors as well, and one of them, Cardinal Granvelle, had Philip's ear. It was he who governed the Regent—Marguerite of Parma, a natural daughter of Charles V.—and to all intents and purposes the country was ruled from Madrid. Hence not a little heartburning.

Meanwhile the new doctrine was rapidly making headway. The number of Protestants amongst the working population of the great cities must at this time have been considerable; there were thousands in all classes halting between two opinions, and honest men all over the country, who had no sympathy with the tenets proscribed, were sickened and astounded at the cruel rigour with which Charles's 'placards' were being now enforced, and in the midst of it all, and in spite of the opposition of Granvelle himself, Philip took a step which he ought to have known would be certain to breed trouble: he obtained from Pope Paul IV. a Bull (1562) to increase the number of bishoprics from three to fifteen, and the measure was at once opposed by all sorts and conditions of men:—by the secular clergy, because they believed that the presence of so many bishops amongst them would lessen their prestige; by the monks, who knew they would be shorn of revenue for the endowment of the new Sees; by the nobles, who regarded the great abbeys as the appanage of their younger sons; by the people, who were firmly convinced that this step was only the prelude to further persecution; and opposition was increased tenfold when presently it became known that the proposed metropolitan See of Mechlin was to be confided to Cardinal Granvelle. Philip, however, refused to draw back; but, so threatening was the attitude of the nobles, that at last, at the request of the Regent herself, he consented to Granvelle's resignation (1564), though almost immediately afterwards he gave orders that the edicts against heresy should be enforced with increased rigour. Then, on the 15th of February 1565, came the famous Compromis des nobles, and a petition for the redress of grievances, which was presented to the Regent two months later by a deputation of four hundred gentlemen, many of whom were Catholics, with a request that she would transmit it to Philip, and which he in due course refused. 'Ne vous inquiétez pas ce ne sont que des gueux,' the Lord of Berlaymont had whispered to Marguerite, dismayed at the long line of petitioners who solemnly filed before her in the great hall of the Coudenberg; and that night, at a banquet in the palace of the Lord of Culembourg, now the prison of the Petits Carmes, they made this term of reproach their signe de ralliement; they were 'gueux,' they said, 'et fidèles au roi jusqu'à la besace.' They proved it by scattering seditious pamphlets broadcast all over the country, and the following year—the wonder jaar, as it was afterwards called—the Calvinist mob began to purge the land of idols. In Flanders alone more than four hundred churches and religious houses were sacked, and what happened at Antwerp is significant—every statue in the cathedral was shattered, save that of the unrepentant thief.

The worst of the trouble was, however, over; order had been restored; Antwerp, where the Protestants were strongest, had opened its gates to the Regent; thanks to her firmness and moderation, the country was being rapidly pacified, and a very general reaction in favour of the government and of the old faith had already set in, when Philip, who, when he heard of the havoc wrought by the Protestants, had sworn by the soul of his father to make them pay for it, despatched to the Netherlands a Spanish army under the command of Alva.