rest of the council should be aware of the change in his views.  He wished, he said, to dissemble.  The astute President, for a moment, could not imagine the Governor’s drift.  He afterwards perceived that the object of this little piece of deception had been to close his mouth.  The Duke obviously conjectured that the President, lulled into security, by this secret assurance, would be silent; that the other councillors, believing the President to have adopted the Governor’s views, would alter their opinions; and that the opposition of the estates, thus losing its support in the council, would likewise very soon be abandoned.  The President, however, was not to be entrapped by this falsehood.  He resolutely maintained his hostility to the tax, depending for his security on the royal opinion, the popular feeling, and the judgment of his colleagues.

The daily meetings of the board were almost entirely occupied by this single subject.  Although since the arrival of Alva the Council of Blood had usurped nearly all the functions of the state and finance-councils, yet there now seemed a disposition on the part of Alva to seek the countenance, even while he spurned the authority, of other functionaries.  He found, however, neither sympathy nor obedience.  The President stoutly told him that he was endeavouring to swim against the stream, that the tax was offensive to the people, and that the voice of the people was the voice of God.  On the last day of July, however, the Duke issued an edict, by which summary collection of the tenth and twentieth pence was ordered.  The whole country was immediately in uproar.  The estates of every province, the assemblies of every city, met and remonstrated.  The merchants suspended all business, the petty dealers shut up their shops.  The people congregated together in masses, vowing resistance to the illegal and cruel impost.  Not a farthing was collected.  The “seven stiver people”, spies of government, who for that paltry daily stipend were employed to listen for treason in every tavern, in every huckster’s booth, in every alley of every city, were now quite unable to report all the curses which were hourly heard uttered against the tyranny of the Viceroy.  Evidently, his power was declining.  The councillors resisted him, the common people almost defied him.  A mercer to whom he was indebted for thirty thousand florins’ worth of goods, refused to open his shop, lest the tax should be collected on his merchandize.  The Duke confiscated his debt, as the mercer had foreseen, but this being a pecuniary sacrifice, seemed preferable to acquiescence in a measure so vague and so boundless that it might easily absorb the whole property of the country.