he council for this
important mission, set out for Madrid in the month of February,
1565. Philip received him with profound hypocrisy; loaded him
with the most flattering promises; sent him back in the utmost
elation: and when the credulous count returned to Brussels, he
found that the written orders, of which he was the bearer, were
in direct variance with every word which the king had uttered.

These orders were chiefly concerning the reiterated subject of
the persecution to be inflexibly pursued against the religious
reformers. Not satisfied with the hitherto established forms of
punishment, Philip now expressly commanded that the more revolting
means decreed by his father in the rigor of his early zeal, such
as burning, living burial, and the like, should be adopted; and
he somewhat more obscurely directed that the victims should be no
longer publicly immolated, but secretly destroyed. He endeavored,
by this vague phraseology, to avoid the actual utterance of the word
"inquisition"; but he thus virtually established that atrocious
tribunal, with attributes still more terrific than even in Spain;
for there the condemned had at least the consolation of dying
in open day, and of displaying the fortitude which is rarely
proof against the horror of a private execution. Philip had thus
consummated his treason against the principles of justice and the
practices of jurisprudence, which had heretofore characterized
the country; and against the most vital of those privileges which
he had solemnly sworn to maintain.

His design of establishing this horrible tribunal, so impiously
named "holy" by its founders, had been long suspected by the
people of the Netherlands. The expression of those fears had
reached him more than once. He as often replied by assurances
that he had formed no such project, and particularly to Count
d'Egmont during his recent visit to Madrid. But at that very time
he assembled a conclave of his creatures, doctors of theology,
of whom he formally demanded an opinion as to whether he could
conscientiously tolerate two sorts of religion in the Netherlands.
The doctors, hoping to please him, replied, that "he might, for
the avoidance of a greater evil." Philip trembled with rage,
and exclaimed, with a threatening tone, "I ask not if I _can_,
but if I _ought_." The theologians read in this question the
nature of the expected reply; and it was amply conformable to
his wish. He immediately threw himself on h