is habits led him to transfer
into all government the severe discipline of a camp, and to conceive
no measures between prince and subject but those of rigid command and
implicit obedience. This general, in 1568, conducted from Italy to
the Low Countries a powerful body of veteran Spaniards; and his avowed
animosity to the Flemings, with his known character, struck that whole
people with terror and consternation. It belongs not to our subject to
relate at length those violences which Alva's natural barbarity,
steeled by reflection and aggravated by insolence, exercised on those
flourishing provinces. It suffices to say, that all their privileges,
the gift of so many princes, and the inheritance of so many ages,
were openly and expressly abolished by edict; arbitrary and sanguinary
tribunals erected; the counts Egmont and Horn, in spite of their great
merits and past services, brought to the scaffold; multitudes of
all ranks thrown into confinement, and thence delivered over to the
executioner; and notwithstanding the peaceable submission of all men,
nothing was heard of but confiscation, imprisonment, exile, torture, and
death.

Elizabeth was equally displeased to see the progress of that scheme laid
for the extermination of the Protestants, and to observe the erection of
so great a military power in a state situated in so near a neighborhood.
She gave protection to all the Flemish exiles who took shelter in her
dominions; and as many of these were the most industrious inhabitants of
the Netherlands, and had rendered that country celebrated for its
arts, she reaped the advantage of introducing into England some useful
manufactures, which were formerly unknown in that kingdom. Foreseeing
that the violent government of Alva could not long subsist without
exciting some commotion, she ventured to commit an insult upon him,
which she would have been cautious not to hazard against a more
established authority. Some Genoese merchants had engaged, by contract
with Philip, to transport into Flanders the sum of four hundred thousand
crowns; and the vessels on which this money was embarked, had been
attacked in the Channel by some privateers equipped by the French
Hugonots, and had taken shelter in Plymouth and Southampton. The
commanders of the ships pretended that the money belonged to the king of
Spain; but the queen, finding upon inquiry that it was the property of
Genoese merchants, took possession of it as a loan; and by that