een the course pursued by the seigniors, the Regent and
the King, in regard to that all-absorbing subject of Netherland
politics--the straggle against Granvelle--the Cardinal, in his letters to
Philip, had been painting the situation by minute daily touches, in a
manner of which his pencil alone possessed the secret.

Still maintaining the attitude of an injured but forgiving Christian, he
spoke of the nobles in a tone of gentle sorrow. He deprecated any rising
of the royal wrath in his behalf; he would continue to serve the
gentlemen, whether they would or no; he was most anxious lest any
considerations on his account should interfere with the King's decision
in regard to the course to be pursued in the Netherlands. At the same
time, notwithstanding these general professions of benevolence towards
the nobles, he represented them as broken spendthrifts, wishing to create
general confusion in order to escape from personal liabilities; as
conspirators who had placed themselves within the reach of the
attorney-general; as ambitious malcontents who were disposed to overthrow
the royal authority, and to substitute an aristocratic republic upon its
ruins. He would say nothing to prejudice the King's mind against these
gentlemen, but he took care to omit nothing which could possibly
accomplish that result. He described them as systematically opposed to
the policy which he knew lay nearest the King's heart, and as determined
to assassinate the faithful minister who was so resolutely carrying it
out, if his removal could be effected in no other way. He spoke of the
state of religion as becoming more and more unsatisfactory, and bewailed
the difficulty with which he could procure the burning of heretics;
difficulties originating in the reluctance of men from whose elevated
rank better things might have been expected.

As Granvelle is an important personage, as his character has been
alternately the subject of much censure and of more applause, and as the
epoch now described was the one in which the causes of the great
convulsion were rapidly germinating, it is absolutely necessary that the
reader should be placed in a position to study the main character, as
painted by his own hand; the hand in which were placed, at that moment,
the destinies of a mighty empire. It is the historian's duty, therefore,
to hang the picture of his administration fully in the light. At the
moment when the 11th of March letter was despatched, the Cardi