ce, much progress
might be made; but that we can do but little so long as he remains in the
government of the provinces and refuses to assist us." In a subsequent
letter, he again uttered com plaints against the Marquis and Montigny,
who were evermore his scapegoats and bugbears. Berghen will give us no
aid, he wrote, despite of all the letters we send him. He absents himself
for private and political reasons. Montigny has eaten meat in Lent, as
the Bishop of Tournay informs me. Both he and the Marquis say openly that
it is not right to shed blood for matters of faith, so that the King can
judge how much can be effected with such coadjutors. Berghen avoids the
persecution of heretics, wrote the Cardinal again, a month later, to
Secretary Perez. He has gone to Spa for his health, although those who
saw him last say he is fat and hearty.

Granvelle added, however, that they had at last "burned one more preacher
alive." The heretic, he stated, had feigned repentance to save his life,
but finding that, at any rate, his head would be cut off as a dogmatizer,
he retracted his recantation. "So," concluded the Cardinal, complacently,
"they burned him."

He chronicled the sayings and doings of the principal personages in the
Netherlands, for the instruction of the King, with great regularity,
insinuating suspicions when unable to furnish evidence, and adding
charitable apologies, which he knew would have but small effect upon the
mind of his correspondent. Thus he sent an account of a "very secret
meeting" held by Orange, Egmont, Horn, Montigny and Berghen, at the abbey
of La Forest, near Brussels, adding, that he did not know what they had
been doing there, and was at loss what to suspect. He would be most
happy, he said, to put the best interpretation upon their actions, but he
could not help remembering with great sorrow the observation so recently
made by Orange to Montigny, that one day they should be stronger. Later
in the year, the Cardinal informed the King that the same nobles were
holding a conference at Weerdt, that he had not learned what had been
transacted there, but thought the affair very suspicious. Philip
immediately communicated the intelligence to Alva, together with an
expression of Granvelle's fears and of his own, that a popular outbreak
would be the consequence of the continued presence of the minister in the
Netherlands.

The Cardinal omitted nothing in the way of anecdote or inuendo, which
could inju