n his course. There was nothing underhand
in the opposition made to the government. The Netherlands did not
constitute an absolute monarchy. They did not even constitute a monarchy.
There was no king in the provinces. Philip was King of Spain, Naples,
Jerusalem, but he was only Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Lord of
Friesland, hereditary chief, in short, under various titles, of seventeen
states, each one of which, although not republican, possessed
constitutions as sacred as, and much more ancient than, the Crown. The
resistance to the absolutism of Granvelle and Philip was, therefore,
logical, legal, constitutional. It was no cabal, no secret league, as the
Cardinal had the effrontery to term it, but a legitimate exercise of
powers which belonged of old to those who wielded them, and which only an
unrighteous innovation could destroy.

Granvelle's course was secret and subtle. During the whole course of the
proceedings which have just been described, he was; in daily confidential
correspondence with the King, besides being the actual author of the
multitudinous despatches which were sent with the signature of the
Duchess. He openly asserted his right to monopolize all the powers of the
Government; he did his utmost to force upon the reluctant and almost
rebellious people the odious measures which the King had resolved upon,
while in his secret letters he uniformly represented the nobles who
opposed him, as being influenced, not by an honest hatred of oppression
and attachment to ancient rights, but by resentment, and jealousy of
their own importance. He assumed, in his letters to his master, that the
absolutism already existed of right and in fact, which it was the
intention of Philip to establish. While he was depriving the nobles, the
states and the nation of their privileges, and even of their natural
rights (a slender heritage in those days), he assured the King that there
was an evident determination to reduce his authority to a cipher.

The estates, he wrote, had usurped the whole administration of the
finances, and had farmed it out to Antony Van Stralen and others, who
were making enormous profits in the business. "The seignors," he said,
"declare at their dinner parties that I wish to make them subject to the
absolute despotism of your Majesty. In point of fact, however, they
really exercise a great deal more power than the governors of particular
provinces ever did before; and it lacks but little that M