On the 4th of August, Count Horn also addressed a private letter to the King, written in the same spirit as that which characterized the joint letter just cited.  He assured his Majesty that the Cardinal could render no valuable service to the crown on account of the hatred which the whole nation bore him, but that, as far as regarded the maintenance of the ancient religion, all the nobles were willing to do their duty.

The Regent now despatched, according to promise, her private secretary, Thomas de Armenteros, to Spain.  His instructions, which were very elaborate, showed that Granvelle was not mistaken when he charged her with being entirely changed in regard to him, and when he addressed her a reproachful letter, protesting his astonishment that his conduct had become auspicious, and his inability to divine the cause of the weariness and dissatisfaction which she manifested in regard to him.

Armenteros, a man of low, mercenary, and deceitful character, but a favorite of the Regent, and already beginning to acquire that influence over her mind which was soon to become so predominant, was no friend of the Cardinal.  It was not probable that he would diminish the effect of that vague censure mingled with faint commendation, which characterized Margaret’s instructions by any laudatory suggestions of his own.  He was directed to speak in general terms of the advance of heresy, and the increasing penury of the exchequer.  He was to request two hundred thousand crowns toward the lottery, which the Regent proposed to set up as a financial scheme.  He was to represent that the Duchess had tried, unsuccessfully, every conceivable means of accommodating the quarrel between the Cardinal and the seigniors.  She recognized Granvelle’s great capacity, experience, zeal, and devotion—­for all which qualities she made much of him—­while on the other hand she felt that it would be a great inconvenience, and might cause a revolt of the country, were she to retain him in the Netherlands against the will of the seigniors.  These motives had compelled her, the messenger was to add, to place both views of the subject before the eyes of the King.  Armenteros was, furthermore, to narrate the circumstances of the interviews which had recently taken place between herself and the leaders of the opposition party.

From the tenor of these instructions, it was sufficiently obvious that Margaret of Parma was not anxious to retain the Cardinal, but that, on the contrary, she was beginning already to feel alarm at the dangerous position in which she found herself.  A few days after the three nobles had despatched their last letter to the King, they had handed her a formal remonstrance.  In this document they stated their conviction that the country was on the high road to ruin, both as regarded his Majesty’s service and the common weal.  The bare, the popular discontent daily increasing, the fortresses on the frontier in a dilapidated condition.