state. But, long before that time, the project had taken
wind, and created a general sensation through the country.

The people looked on it as an attempt to subject them to the same
ecclesiastical system which existed in Spain. The bishops, by virtue of
their office, were possessed of certain inquisitorial powers, and these
were still further enlarged by the provisions of the royal edicts.
Philip's attachment to the Inquisition was well understood, and there
was probably not a child in the country who had not heard of the _auto
da fe_ which he had sanctioned by his presence on his return to his
dominions. The present changes were regarded as part of a great scheme
for introducing the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands.[519]
However erroneous these conclusions, there is little reason to doubt
they were encouraged by those who knew their fallacy.

[Sidenote: THE NEW BISHOPRICS.]

The nobles had other reasons for opposing the measure. The bishops would
occupy in the legislature the place formerly held by the abbots, who
were indebted for their election to the religious houses over which they
presided. The new prelates, on the contrary, would receive their
nomination from the crown; and the nobles saw with alarm their own
independence menaced by the accession of an order of men who would
naturally be subservient to the interests of the monarch. That the crown
was not insensible to these advantages is evident from a letter of the
minister, in which he sneers at the abbots, as "men fit only to rule
over monasteries, ever willing to thwart the king, and as perverse as
the lowest of the people."[520]

But the greatest opposition arose from the manner in which the new
dignitaries were to be maintained. This was to be done by suppressing
the offices of the abbots, and by appropriating the revenues of their
houses to the maintenance of the bishops. For this economical
arrangement Granvelle seems to have been chiefly responsible. Thus the
income--amounting to fifty thousand ducats--of the Abbey of Afflighen,
one of the wealthiest in Brabant, was to be bestowed on the
archiepiscopal see of Mechlin, to be held by the minister himself.[521]
In virtue of that dignity, Granvelle would become primate of the
Netherlands.

Loud was the clamor excited by this arrangement among the members of the
religious fraternities, and all those who directly or indirectly had any
interest in them. It was a manifest perversion of the funds fr