Such were the leading provisions of this famous edict, originally promulgated in 1550 as a recapitulation and condensation of all the previous ordinances of the Emperor upon religious subjects.  By its style and title it was a perpetual edict, and, according to one of its clauses, was to be published forever, once in every six months, in every city and village of the Netherlands.  It had been promulgated at Augsburg, where the Emperor was holding a diet, upon the 25th of September.  Its severity had so appalled the Dowager Queen of Hungary, that she had made a journey to Augsburg expressly to procure a mitigation of some of its provisions.  The principal alteration which she was able to obtain of the Emperor was, however, in the phraseology only.  As a concession to popular, prejudice, the words “spiritual judges” were substituted for “inquisitors” wherever that expression had occurred in the original draft.

The edict had been re-enacted by the express advice of the Bishop of Arras, immediately on the accession of Philip:  The prelate knew the value of the Emperor’s name; he may have thought, also, that it would be difficult to increase the sharpness of the ordinances.  “I advised the King,” says Granvelle, in a letter written a few years later, “to make no change in the placards, but to proclaim the text drawn up by the Emperor, republishing the whole as the King’s edict, with express insertion of the phrase, ‘Carolus,’ etc.  I recommended this lest men should calumniate his Majesty as wishing to introduce novelties in the matter of religion.”

This edict, containing the provisions which have been laid before the reader, was now to be enforced with the utmost rigor; every official personage, from the stadholders down, having received the most stringent instructions to that effect, under Philip’s own hand.  This was the first gift of Philip and of Granvelle to the Netherlands; of the monarch who said of himself that he had always, “from the beginning of his government, followed the path of clemency, according to his natural disposition, so well known to all the world;” of the prelate who said of himself, “that he had ever combated the opinion that any thing could be accomplished by terror, death, and violence.”

During the period of the French and Papal war, it has been seen that the execution of these edicts had been permitted to slacken.  It was now resumed with redoubled fury.  Moreover, a new measure had increased the disaffection and dismay of the people, already sufficiently filled with apprehension.  As an additional security for the supremacy of the ancient religion, it had been thought desirable that the number of bishops should be increased.  There were but four sees in the Netherlands, those of Arras, Cambray, Tournay, and Utrecht.  That of Utrecht was within the archiepiscopate of Cologne; the other three were within that of Rheims.  It seemed proper that the prelates of the Netherlands should owe no