Milan and the crown of
Naples, previously to his marriage with Mary Tudor. The imperial crown he
had been obliged, much against his will, to forego. The archduchy of
Austria, with the hereditary German dependencies of his father's family,
had been transferred by the Emperor to his brother Ferdinand, on the
occasion of the marriage of that prince with Anna, only sister of King
Louis of Hungary. Ten years afterwards, Ferdinand (King of Hungary and
Bohemia since the death of Louis, slain in 1526 at the battle of Mohacz)
was elected King of the Romans, and steadily refused all the entreaties
afterwards made to him in behalf of Philip, to resign his crown and his
succession to the Empire, in favor of his nephew. With these diminutions,
Philip had now received all the dominions of his father. He was King of
all the Spanish kingdoms and of both the Sicilies. He was titular King of
England, France, and Jerusalem. He was "Absolute Dominator" in Asia,
Africa, and America; he was Duke of Milan and of both Burgundies, and
Hereditary Sovereign of the seventeen Netherlands.

Thus the provinces had received a new master. A man of foreign birth and
breeding, not speaking a word of their language, nor of any language
which the mass of the inhabitants understood, was now placed in supreme
authority over them, because he represented, through the females, the
"good" Philip of Burgundy, who a century before had possessed himself by
inheritance, purchase, force, or fraud, of the sovereignty in most of
those provinces. It is necessary to say an introductory word or two
concerning the previous history of the man to whose hands the destiny of
so many millions was now entrusted.

He was born in May, 1527, and was now therefore twenty-eight years of
age. At the age of sixteen he had been united to his cousin, Maria of
Portugal, daughter of John III. and of the Emperor's sister, Donna
Catalina. In the following year (1544) he became father of the celebrated
and ill-starred Don Carlos, and a widower. The princess owed her death,
it was said, to her own imprudence and to the negligence or bigotry of
her attendants. The Duchess of Alva, and other ladies who had charge of
her during her confinement, deserted her chamber in order to obtain
absolution by witnessing an auto-da-fe of heretics. During their absence,
the princess partook voraciously of a melon, and forfeited her life in
consequence.

In 1548, Don Philip had made his first appearance in th