Granvelle added, however, that they had at last “burned one more preacher alive.”  The heretic, he stated, had feigned repentance to save his life, but finding that, at any rate, his head would be cut off as a dogmatizer, he retracted his recantation.  “So,” concluded the Cardinal, complacently, “they burned him.”

He chronicled the sayings and doings of the principal personages in the Netherlands, for the instruction of the King, with great regularity, insinuating suspicions when unable to furnish evidence, and adding charitable apologies, which he knew would have but small effect upon the mind of his correspondent.  Thus he sent an account of a “very secret meeting” held by Orange, Egmont, Horn, Montigny and Berghen, at the abbey of La Forest, near Brussels, adding, that he did not know what they had been doing there, and was at loss what to suspect.  He would be most happy, he said, to put the best interpretation upon their actions, but he could not help remembering with great sorrow the observation so recently made by Orange to Montigny, that one day they should be stronger.  Later in the year, the Cardinal informed the King that the same nobles were holding a conference at Weerdt, that he had not learned what had been transacted there, but thought the affair very suspicious.  Philip immediately communicated the intelligence to Alva, together with an expression of Granvelle’s fears and of his own, that a popular outbreak would be the consequence of the continued presence of the minister in the Netherlands.

The Cardinal omitted nothing in the way of anecdote or inuendo, which could injure the character of the leading nobles, with the exception, perhaps, of Count Egmont.  With this important personage, whose character he well understood, he seemed determined, if possible, to maintain friendly relations.  There was a deep policy in this desire, to which we shall advert hereafter.  The other seigniors were described in general terms as disposed to overthrow the royal authority.  They were bent upon Granvelle’s downfall as the first step, because, that being accomplished, the rest would follow as a matter of course.  “They intend,” said he, “to reduce the state into the form of a republic, in which the King shall have no power except to do their bidding.”  He added, that he saw with regret so many German troops gathering on the borders; for he believed them to be in the control of the disaffected nobles of the Netherlands.  Having made this grave insinuation, he proceeded in the same breath to express his anger at a statement said to have been made by Orange and Egmont, to the effect that he had charged them with intending to excite a civil commotion, an idea, he added, which had never entered his head.  In the same paragraph, he poured into the most suspicious ear that ever listened to a tale of treason, his conviction that the nobles were planning a republic by the aid of foreign troops, and uttered a complaint that these nobles had accused him of suspecting them.  As for the Prince of Orange, he was described as eternally boasting of his influence in Germany, and the great things which he could effect by means of his connexions there, “so that,” added the Cardinal, “we hear no other song.”