all her acts reversed; besides which, she had the king’s orders to consult her private council on all affairs whatever, and the council of state on any matter of paramount importance.  These two councils, however, contained the elements of a serious opposition to the royal projects, in the persons of the patriot nobles sprinkled among Philip’s devoted creatures.  Thus the influence of the crown was often thwarted, if not actually balanced; and the proposals which emanated from it frequently opposed by the stadtholderess herself.  She, although a woman of masculine appearance and habits,[2] was possessed of no strength of mind.  Her prevailing sentiment seemed to be dread of the king; yet she was at times influenced by a sense of justice, and by the remonstrances of the well-judging members of her councils.  But these were not all the difficulties that clogged the machinery of the state.  After the king, the government, and the councils, had deliberated on any measure, its execution rested with the provincial governors or stadtholders, or the magistrates of the towns.  Almost everyone of these, being strongly attached to the laws and customs of the nation, hesitated, or refused to obey the orders conveyed to them, when those orders appeared illegal.  Some, however, yielded to the authority of the government; so it often happened that an edict, which in one district was carried into full effect, was in others deferred, rejected, or violated, in a way productive of great confusion in the public affairs.

[Footnote 2:  Strada.]

Philip was conscious that he had himself to blame for the consequent disorder.  In nominating the members of the two councils, he had overreached himself in his plan for silently sapping the liberty that was so obnoxious to his designs.  But to neutralize the influence of the restive members, he had left Granvelle the first place in the administration.  This man, an immoral ecclesiastic, an eloquent orator, a supple courtier, and a profound politician, bloated with pride, envy, insolence, and vanity, was the real head of the government.[3] Next to him among the royalist party was Viglius, president of the privy council, an erudite schoolman, attached less to the broad principles of justice than to the letter of the laws, and thus carrying pedantry into the very councils of the state.  Next in order came the count de Berlaimont, head of the financial department—­a stern and intolerant satellite of the court, and a furious enemy to those national institutions which operated as checks upon fraud.  These three individuals formed the stadtholderess’s privy council.  The remaining creatures of the king were mere subaltern agents.

[Footnote 3:  Strada, a royalist, a Jesuit, and therefore a fair witness on this point, uses the following words in portraying the character of this odious minister:  Animumavidum_invidumque,_ac_ simultatesinter_p
rincipem_et_populos_occulti_foventum_.]