he vast rents of St.
Armand and Afflighem, he could seize the abbey of Trulle from the
expectant hands of poor dependents, and accept tapestries and hogsheads
of wine from Jacques Lequien and others, as a tax on the benefices which
he procured for them. Yet the man who, like his father before him, had so
long fattened on the public money, who at an early day had incurred the
Emperor's sharp reproof for his covetousness, whose family, beside all
these salaries and personal property, possessed already fragments of the
royal domain, in the shape of nineteen baronies and seigniories in
Burgundy, besides the county of Cantecroix and other estates in the
Netherlands, had the effrontery to affirm, "We have always rather
regarded the service of the master than our own particular profit."

In estimating the conduct of the minister, in relation to the provinces,
we are met upon the threshold by a swarm of vague assertions which are of
a nature to blind or distract the judgment. His character must be judged
as a whole, and by its general results, with a careful allowance for
contradictions and equivocations. Truth is clear and single, but the
lights are parti-colored and refracted in the prism of hypocrisy. The
great feature of his administration was a prolonged conflict between
himself and the leading seigniors of the Netherlands. The ground of the
combat was the religious question. Let the quarrel be turned or tortured
in any manner that human ingenuity can devise, it still remains
unquestionable that Granvelle's main object was to strengthen and to
extend the inquisition, that of his adversaries to overthrow the
institution. It followed, necessarily, that the ancient charters were to
be trampled in the dust before that tribunal could be triumphant. The
nobles, although all Catholics, defended the cause of the poor religious
martyrs, the privileges of the nation and the rights of their order. They
were conservatives, battling for the existence of certain great facts,
entirely consonant to any theory of justice and divine reason--for
ancient constitutions which had been purchased with blood and treasure.
"I will maintain," was the motto of William of Orange. Philip, bigoted
and absolute almost beyond comprehension, might perhaps have proved
impervious to any representations, even of Granvelle. Nevertheless, the
minister might have attempted the task, and the responsibility is heavy
upon the man who shared the power and directed th