Philip, understanding his position, was revolving renewed military projects while his subjects were ringing merry bells and lighting bonfires in the Netherlands.  These schemes, which were to be carried out in the immediate future, caused, however, a temporary delay in the great purpose to which he was to devote his life.

The Emperor had always desired to regard the Netherlands as a whole, and he hated the antiquated charters and obstinate privileges which interfered with his ideas of symmetry.  Two great machines, the court of Mechlin and the inquisition, would effectually simplify and assimilate all these irregular and heterogeneous rights.  The civil tribunal was to annihilate all diversities in their laws by a general cassation of their constitutions, and the ecclesiastical court was to burn out all differences in their religious faith.  Between two such millstones it was thought that the Netherlands might be crushed into uniformity.  Philip succeeded to these traditions.  The father had never sufficient leisure to carry out all his schemes, but it seemed probable that the son would be a worthy successor, at least in all which concerned the religious part of his system.  One of the earliest measures of his reign was to re-enact the dread edict of 1550.  This he did by the express advice of the Bishop of Arras who represented to him the expediency of making use of the popularity of his father’s name, to sustain the horrible system resolved upon.  As Charles was the author of the edict, it could be always argued that nothing new was introduced; that burning, hanging, and drowning for religious differences constituted a part of the national institutions; that they had received the sanction of the wise Emperor, and had been sustained by the sagacity of past generations.  Nothing could have been more subtle, as the event proved, than this advice.  Innumerable were the appeals made in subsequent years, upon this subject, to the patriotism and the conservative sentiments of the Netherlanders.  Repeatedly they were summoned to maintain the inquisition, on the ground that it had been submitted to by their ancestors, and that no change had been made by Philip, who desired only to maintain church and crown in the authority which they had enjoyed in the days of his father of very laudable memory.

Nevertheless, the King’s military plans seemed to interfere for the moment with this cherished object.  He seemed to swerve, at starting, from pursuing the goal which he was only to abandon with life.  The edict of 1550 was re-enacted and confirmed, and all office-holders were commanded faithfully to enforce it upon pain of immediate dismissal.  Nevertheless, it was not vigorously carried into effect any where.  It was openly resisted in Holland, its proclamation was flatly refused in Antwerp, and repudiated throughout Brabant.  It was strange that such disobedience should be tolerated, but the King wanted money.  He was willing to refrain for a season from exasperating the provinces by fresh religious persecution at the moment when he was endeavoring to extort every penny which it was possible to wring from their purses.