olence, all the complaints of the Belgian
nation, to which his ministry had been sacrificed; for then, he said, he
would be suspected of poisoning the very source of that power, whose
outlets only he had hitherto been charged with corrupting. He therefore
sent him to Burgundy, his native place, for which a decent pretext
fortunately presented itself. The cardinal gave to his departure from
Brussels the appearance of an unimportant journey, from which he would
return in a few days. At the same time, however, all the state
counsellors, who, under his administration, had voluntarily excluded
themselves from its sittings, received a command from the court to
resume their seats in the senate at Brussels. Although the latter
circumstance made his return not very credible, nevertheless the
remotest possibility of it sobered the triumph which celebrated his
departure. The regent herself appears to have been undecided what to
think about the report; for, in a fresh letter to the king, she repeated
all the representations and arguments which ought to restrain him from
restoring this minister. Granvella himself, in his correspondence with
Barlaimont and Viglius, endeavored to keep alive this rumor, and at
least to alarm with fears, however unsubstantial, the enemies whom he
could no longer punish by his presence. Indeed, the dread of the
influence of this extraordinary man was so exceedingly great that, to
appease it, he was at last driven even from his home and his country.

After the death of Pius IV., Granvella went to Rome, to be present at
the election of a new pope, and at the same time to discharge some
commissions of his master, whose confidence in him remained unshaken.
Soon after, Philip made him viceroy of Naples, where he succumbed to the
seductions of the climate, and the spirit which no vicissitudes could
bend voluptuousness overcame. He was sixty-two years old when the king
allowed him to revisit Spain, where he continued with unlimited powers
to administer the affairs of Italy. A gloomy old age, and the
self-satisfied pride of a sexagenarian administration made him a harsh
and rigid judge of the opinions of others, a slave of custom, and a
tedious panegyrist of past times. But the policy of the closing century
had ceased to be the policy of the opening one. A new and younger
ministry were soon weary of so imperious a superintendent, and Philip
himself began to shun the aged counsellor, who found nothing worthy of
p