ch they were
suffering. The King, therefore, although far from clement, was not
extremely rigorous. He refused the object of the appeal, but he did not
put the envoys to death by whom it was brought to Madrid. This would have
certainly been the case in matters strictly religious, or even had the
commissioners arrived two years before, but even Philip believed,
perhaps, that for the moment almost enough innocent blood had been shed.
At any rate he suffered the legates from Utrecht to return, not with
their petition, granted, but at least with their heads upon their
shoulders. Early in the following year, the provinces still remaining
under martial law, all the Utrecht charters were taken into the
possession of government, and deposited in the castle of Vredenberg. It
was not till after the departure of Alva, that they were restored;
according to royal command, by the new governor, Requesens.

By the middle of the year 1569, Alva wrote to the King, with great
cheerfulness of tone, announcing that the estates of the provinces had
all consented to the tax. He congratulated his Majesty upon the fact that
this income might thenceforth be enjoyed in perpetuity, and that it would
bring at least two millions yearly into his coffers, over and above the
expenses of government. The hundredth penny, as he calculated, would
amount to at least five millions.

He was, however, very premature in his triumph, for the estates were not
long in withdrawing a concession which had either been wrung from them by
violence or filched from them by misrepresentation. Taking the ground
that the assent of all had been stipulated before that of any one should
be esteemed valid, every province now refused to enforce or to permit the
collection of the tenth or the twentieth penny within their limits. Dire
were the threatenings and the wrath of the Viceroy, painfully protracted
the renewed negotiations with the estates. At last, a compromise was
effected, and the final struggle postponed. Late in the summer it was
agreed that the provinces should pay two millions yearly for the two
following years, the term to expire in the month of August, 1571. Till
that period, therefore, there was comparative repose upon the subject.

The question of a general pardon had been agitated for more than a year,
both in Brussels and Madrid. Viglius, who knew his countrymen better than
the Viceroy knew them, had written frequently to his friend Hopper, on
the propriety o