he must have been an ecclesiastic, and as vile as priests always were.  They witnessed the daily contumely which she heaped upon poor Viglius, both because he was a friend of Granvelle and was preparing in his old age to take orders.  The days were gone, indeed, when Margaret was so filled with respectful affection for the prelate, that she could secretly correspond with the Holy Father at Rome, and solicit the red hat for the object of her veneration.  She now wrote to Philip, stating that she was better informed as to affairs in the Netherlands than she had ever formerly been.  She told her brother that all the views of Granvelle and of his followers, Viglius with the rest, had tended to produce a revolution which they hoped that Philip would find in full operation when he should come to the Netherlands.  It was their object, she said, to fish in troubled waters, and, to attain that aim, they had ever pursued the plan of gaining the exclusive control of all affairs.  That was the reason why they had ever opposed the convocation of the states-general.  They feared that their books would be read, and their frauds, injustice, simony, and rapine discovered.  This would be the result, if tranquillity were restored to the country, and therefore they had done their best to foment and maintain discord.  The Duchess soon afterwards entertained her royal brother with very detailed accounts of various acts of simony, peculation, and embezzlement committed by Viglius, which the Cardinal had aided and abetted, and by which he had profited.—­[Correspondence de Phil.  II, i. 318-320.]—­These revelations are inestimable in a historical point of view.  They do not raise our estimate of Margaret’s character, but they certainly give us a clear insight into the nature of the Granvelle administration.  At the same time it was characteristic of the Duchess, that while she was thus painting the portrait of the Cardinal for the private eye of his sovereign, she should address the banished minister himself in a secret strain of condolence, and even of penitence.  She wrote to assure Granvelle that she repented extremely having adopted the views of Orange.  She promised that she would state publicly every where that the Cardinal was an upright man, intact in his morals and his administration, a most zealous and faithful servant of the King.  She added that she recognized the obligations she was under to him, and that she loved him like a brother.  She affirmed that if the Flemish seigniors had induced her to cause the Cardinal to be deprived of the government, she was already penitent, and that her fault deserved that the King, her brother, should cut off her head, for having occasioned so great a calamity.—­["Memoires de Granvelle,” tom. 33, p. 67.]

There was certainly discrepancy between the language thus used simultaneously by the Duchess to Granvelle and to Philip, but Margaret had been trained in the school of Macchiavelli, and had sat at the feet of Loyola.