When Philip II. succeeded to most of his father’s abdicated thrones, there was no diminution of Spanish pretensions, and he became the mightiest sovereign that Europe had known since Charlemagne.  Philip’s failure to obtain the Imperial throne was a personal disappointment to both father and son, but it was no loss of real power to the elder branch of the House of Austria.  The death of Mary of England, though it prevented Philip from availing himself of the men and money of his wife’s kingdom, was rather beneficial to him, as chief of the Spanish dominion, than otherwise.  What could he have done with the haughty, arrogant, self-sufficient islanders, who were as proud as the Castilians themselves, without any of the imperial pretensions of the Castilians to justify their pride, had Mary lived and reigned, while he alone should have ruled?  There would have been civil war in England but for Mary’s death, which occurred at a happy time both for her and for her subjects.  Philip also lost a portion of his Northern hereditary dominions, because he would have a tyranny established in the Netherlands.  But all that he lost in Germany, in the Netherlands, and in Britain was compensated by his easy conquest of Portugal after the extinction of the House of Avis.  The Portugal of those times was a very different country from the Portugal of these times.  It was not only Portugal and the Algarves that Philip added to the dominions of Spain,—­and that alone would have been a great thing, for it would have perfected the Spanish rule of the Peninsula, always a most desirable event in the eyes of Castilians,—­but the enormous and wide-spread possessions of Portugal in Africa, in America, and in Asia became subject to the conqueror.  Portugal alone was of far more value to Spain than England could have been; but Portugal and her colonies together made a greater prize than England, Holland, and Germany could have made, recollecting how full of “heretics” those countries were, and that the more heretical subjects Philip should have had, the less powerful he would have been.  Portugal was as “Faithful” as Spain was “Catholic,” and both titles now belonged to Philip.  At that time, Philip’s power, to outward seeming, was at its height.  It was not certain that he would lose Holland, and it was certain that he had gained Portugal and all her dependencies.  He was absolute master of the Spanish Peninsula, and his will was law over nearly all the Italian Peninsula except that portion of it which was ruled by Venice.  He alone of European sovereigns had vast possessions in both Indies, the East and the West.  He was monarch of no insignificant part of Africa, and in America he was the Great King, his dominion there being almost as little disputed as was that of Selkirk in his island.  He was still master of the best part of the Low Countries, and the Hollanders were regarded as nothing more than his rebellious subjects.  He was the sole Western potentate who had lieutenants