Philip was determined that no remonstrance from great nobles or from private citizens should interfere with the thorough execution of the grand scheme on which he was resolved, and of which the new bishoprics formed an important part.  Opposition irritated him more and more, till his hatred of the opponents became deadly; but it, at the same time, confirmed him in his purpose. “’Tis no time to temporize,” he wrote to Granvelle; “we must inflict chastisement with full rigor and severity.  These rascals can only be made to do right through fear, and not always even by that means.”

At the same time, the royal finances did not admit of any very active measures, at the moment, to enforce obedience to a policy which was already so bitterly opposed.  A rough estimate, made in the King’s own handwriting, of the resources and obligations of his exchequer, a kind of balance sheet for the, years 1560 and 1561, drawn up much in the same manner as that in which a simple individual would make a note of his income and expenditure, gave but a dismal picture of his pecuniary, condition.  It served to show how intelligent a financier is despotism, and how little available are the resources of a mighty empire when regarded merely as private property, particularly when the owner chances to have the vanity of attending to all details himself:  “Twenty millions of ducats,” began the memorandum, “will be required to disengage my revenues.  But of this,” added the King, with whimsical pathos for an account-book, “we will not speak at present, as the matter is so entirely impossible.”  He then proceeded to enter the various items of expense which were to be met during the two years; such as so many millions due to the Fuggers (the Rothschilds of the sixteenth century), so many to merchants in Flanders, Seville, and other places, so much for Prince Doria’s galleys, so much for three years’ pay due to his guards, so much for his household expenditure, so much for the, tuition of Don Carlos, and Don Juan d’Austria, so much for salaries of ambassadors and councillors—­mixing personal and state expenses, petty items and great loans, in one singular jumble, but arriving at a total demand upon his purse of ten million nine hundred and ninety thousand ducats.

To meet this expenditure he painfully enumerated the funds upon which he could reckon for the two years.  His ordinary rents and taxes being all deeply pledged, he could only calculate from that source upon two hundred thousand ducats.  The Indian revenue, so called, was nearly spent; still it might yield him four hundred and twenty thousand ducats.  The quicksilver mines would produce something, but so little as hardly to require mentioning.  As to the other mines, they were equally unworthy of notice, being so very uncertain, and not doing as well as they were wont.  The licences accorded by the crown to carry slaves to America were put down at fifty thousand ducats for the two years.  The product of the “crozada”