Charles was nevertheless a zealous and rigid Catholic; and in the Low Countries, where his authority was undisputed, he proscribed the heretics, and even violated the privileges of the country by appointing functionaries for the express purpose of their pursuit and punishment.  This imprudent stretch of power fostered a rising spirit of opposition; for, though entertaining the best disposition to their young prince, the people deeply felt and loudly complained of the government; and thus the germs of a mighty revolution gradually began to be developed.

Charles V. and Francis I. had been rivals for dignity and power, and they now became implacable personal enemies.  Young, ambitious, and sanguine, they could not, without reciprocal resentment, pursue in the same field objects essential to both.  Charles, by a short but timely visit to England in 1520, had the address to gain over to his cause and secure for his purpose the powerful interest of Cardinal Wolsey, and to make a most favorable impression on Henry VIII.; and thus strengthened, he entered on the struggle against his less wily enemy with infinite advantage.  War was declared on frivolous pretexts in 1521.  The French sustained it for some time with great valor; but Francis being obstinately bent on the conquest of the Milanais, his reverses secured the triumph of his rival, and he fell into the hands of the imperial troops at the battle of Pavia in 1525.  Charles’s dominions in the Netherlands suffered severely from the naval operations during the war; for the French cruisers having, on repeated occasions, taken, pillaged, and almost destroyed the principal resources of the herring fishery, Holland and Zealand felt considerable distress, which was still further augmented by the famine which desolated these provinces in 1524.

While such calamities afflicted the northern portion of the Netherlands, Flanders and Brabant continued to flourish, in spite of temporary embarrassments.  The bishop of Utrecht having died, his successor found himself engaged in a hopeless quarrel with his new diocese, already more than half converted to Protestantism; and to gain a triumph over these enemies, even by the sacrifice of his dignity, he ceded to the emperor in 1527 the whole of his temporal power.  The duke of Guelders, who then occupied the city of Utrecht, redoubled his hostility at this intelligence; and after having ravaged the neighboring country, he did not lay down his arms till the subsequent year, having first procured an honorable and advantageous peace.  One year more saw the term of this long-continued state of warfare by the Peace of Cambray, between Charles and Francis, which was signed on the 5th of August, 1529.