A government so composed could scarcely fail to excite discontent and create danger to the public weal.  The first proof of incapacity was elicited by the measures required for the departure of the Spanish troops.  The period fixed by the king had already expired, and these obnoxious foreigners were still in the country, living in part on pillage, and each day committing some new excess.  Complaints were carried in successive gradation from the government to the council, and from the council to the king.  The Spaniards were removed to Zealand; but instead of being embarked at any of its ports, they were detained there on various pretexts.  Money, ships, or, on necessity, a wind, was professed to be still wanting for their final removal, by those who found excuses for delay in every element of nature or subterfuge of art.  In the meantime those ferocious soldiers ravaged a part of the country.  The simple natives at length declared they would open the sluices of their dikes; preferring to be swallowed by the waters rather than remain exposed to the cruelty and rapacity of those Spaniards.  Still the embarkation was postponed; until the king, requiring his troops in Spain for some domestic project, they took their long-desired departure in the beginning of the year 1561.

The public discontent at this just cause was soon, however, overwhelmed by one infinitely more important and lasting.  The Belgian clergy had hitherto formed a free and powerful order in the state, governed and represented by four bishops, chosen by the chapters of the towns or elected by the monks of the principal abbeys.  These bishops, possessing an independent territorial revenue, and not directly subject to the influence of the crown, had interests and feelings in common with the nation.  But Philip had prepared, and the pope had sanctioned, the new system of ecclesiastical organization before alluded to, and the provisional government now put it into execution.  Instead of four bishops, it was intended to appoint eighteen, their nomination being vested in the king.  By a wily system of trickery, the subserviency of the abbeys was also aimed at.  The new prelates, on a pretended principle of economy, were endowed with the title of abbots of the chief monasteries of their respective dioceses.  Thus not only would they enjoy the immense wealth of these establishments, but the political rights of the abbots whom they were to succeed; and the whole of the ecclesiastical order become gradually represented (after the death of the then living abbots) by the creatures of the crown.

The consequences of this vital blow to the integrity of the national institutions were evident; and the indignation of both clergy and laity was universal.  Every legal means of opposition was resorted to, but the people were without leaders; the states were not in session.  While the authority of the pope and the king combined, the reverence excited by the very name of religion, and the address and perseverance