were all dissenters, in all of which the principle of mutual toleration had just been accepted by Catholics and Protestants, were now to be brought back to the condition according to which all Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive.  So that the Inquisition, the absolute authority of the monarch, and the exclusive worship of the Roman Church were preserved intact, the King professed himself desirous of “extinguishing the fires of rebellion, and of saving the people from the last desperation.”  With these slight exceptions, Philip was willing to be very benignant.  “More than this,” said he, “cannot and ought not be conceded.”  To these brief but pregnant instructions was added a morsel of advice, personal in its nature, but very characteristic of the writer.  Don John was recommended to take great care of his soul, and also to be very cautious in the management of his amours.

Thus counselled and secretly directed, the new Captain-General had been dismissed to the unhappy Netherlands.  The position, however, was necessarily false.  The man who was renowned for martial exploits, and notoriously devoured by ambition, could hardly inspire deep confidence in the pacific dispositions of the government.  The crusader of Granada and Lepanto, the champion of the ancient Church, was not likely to please the rugged Zealanders who had let themselves be hacked to pieces rather than say one Paternoster, and who had worn crescents in their caps at Leyden, to prove their deeper hostility to the Pope than to the Turk.  The imperial bastard would derive but alight consideration from his paternal blood, in a country where illegitimate birth was more unfavorably regarded than in most other countries, and where a Brabantine edict, recently issued in name of the King; deprived ail political or civil functionaries not born in wedlock; of their offices.  Yet he had received instructions, at his departure, to bring about a pacification, if possible, always maintaining, however, the absolute authority of the crown and the exclusive exercise of the Catholic religion.  How the two great points of his instructions were to be made entirely palatable, was left to time and chance.  There was a vague notion that with the new Governor’s fame, fascinating manners, and imperial parentage, he might accomplish a result which neither fraud nor force—­not the arts of Granvelle, nor the atrocity of Alva, nor the licentiousness of a buccaneering soldiery had been able to effect.  As for Don John himself, he came with no definite plans for the Netherlanders, but with very daring projects of his own, and to pursue these misty visions was his main business on arriving in the provinces.  In the meantime he was disposed to settle the Netherland difficulty in some showy, off-hand fashion, which should cost him but little trouble, and occasion no detriment to the cause of Papacy or absolutism.  Unfortunately for these rapid arrangements, William of Orange was in Zealand, and the Pacification had just been signed at Ghent.