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 extraprovincial allegiance.  It was likewise thought that three millions of souls required more than four spiritual superintendents.  At any rate, whatever might be the interest of the flocks, it was certain that those broad and fertile pastures would sustain more than the present number of shepherds.  The wealth of the religious houses in the provinces was very great.  The abbey of Afflighem alone had a revenue of fifty thousand florins, and there were many others scarcely inferior in wealth.  But these institutions were comparatively independent both of King and Pope.  Electing their own superiors from time to time, in nowise desirous of any change by which their ease might be disturbed and their riches endangered, the honest friars were not likely to engage in any very vigorous crusade against heresy, nor for the sake of introducing or strengthening Spanish institutions, which they knew to be abominated by the people, to