re accordingly equipped. Processions were made, and
prayers put up in all the churches, for the prosperous passage of the
king. Yet there were some in the Netherlands who remarked that prayers
to avert the dangers of the sea were hardly needed by the monarch in his
palace at Madrid![934] Many of those about the royal person soon
indulged in the same scepticism in regard to the king's sincerity, as
week after week passed away, and no arrangements were made for his
departure. Among the contradictory rumors at court in respect to the
king's intention, the pope's nuncio wrote, it was impossible to get at
the truth.[935] It was easy to comprehend the general policy of Philip,
but impossible to divine the particular plans by which, it was to be
carried out. If such was the veil which hid the monarch's purposes even
from the eyes of those who had nearest access to his person, how can we
hope at this distance of time to penetrate it? Yet the historian of the
nineteenth century is admitted to the perusal of many an authentic
document revealing the royal purpose, which never came under the eye of
the courtier of Madrid.

[Sidenote: HIS APPOINTMENT.]

With all the light thus afforded, it is still difficult to say whether
Philip ever was sincere in his professions of visiting the Netherlands.
If he were so at any time, it certainly was not after he had decided on
the mission of Alva. Philip widely differed from his father in a
sluggishness of body which made any undertaking that required physical
effort exceedingly irksome. He shrunk from no amount of sedentary labor,
would toil from morning till midnight in his closet, like the humblest
of his secretaries. But a journey was a great undertaking. After his
visits, during his father's lifetime, to England and the Low Countries,
he rarely travelled farther, as his graceless son satirically hinted,
than from Madrid to Aranjuez, or Madrid to the Escorial. A thing so
formidable as an expedition to Flanders, involving a tedious journey
through an unfriendly land, or a voyage through seas not less
unfriendly, was what, under ordinary circumstances, the king would have
never dreamed of.

The present aspect of affairs, moreover, had nothing in it particularly
inviting,--especially to a prince of Philip's temper. Never was there a
prince more jealous of his authority; and the indignities to which he
might have been exposed, in the disorderly condition of the country,
might well have come t