the intelligence to his already departed chief, exclaiming in his letter, “what does the ungrateful baboon mean by meddling with our affairs?  A pretty state of things, truly, if kings are to choose or retain their ministers at the will of the people; little does he know of the disasters which would be caused by a relaxation of the edicts.”  In the same sense, the Cardinal, just before his departure, which was now imminent, wrote to warn his sovereign of the seditious character of the men who were then placing their breasts between the people and their butchers.  He assured Philip that upon the movement of those nobles depended the whole existence of the country.  It was time that they should be made to open their eyes.  They should be solicited in every way to abandon their evil courses, since the liberty which they thought themselves defending was but abject slavery; but subjection to a thousand base and contemptible personages, and to that “vile animal called the people.”

It is sufficiently obvious, from the picture which we have now presented of the respective attitudes of Granvelle, of the seigniors and of the nation, during the whole of the year 1563, and the beginning of the following year, that a crisis was fast approaching.  Granvelle was, for the moment, triumphant, Orange, Egmont, and Horn had abandoned the state council, Philip could not yet make up his mind to yield to the storm, and Alva howled defiance at the nobles and the whole people of the Netherlands.  Nevertheless, Margaret of Parma was utterly weary of the minister, the Cardinal himself was most anxious to be gone, and the nation—­for there was a nation, however vile the animal might be—­was becoming daily more enraged at the presence of a man in whom, whether justly or falsely, it beheld the incarnation of the religious oppression under which they groaned.  Meantime, at the close of the year, a new incident came to add to the gravity of the situation.  Caspar Schetz, Baron of Grobbendonck, gave a Great dinner-party, in the month of December, 1563.  This personage, whose name was prominent for many years in the public affairs of the nation, was one of the four brothers who formed a very opulent and influential mercantile establishment.

He was the King’s principal factor and financial agent.  He was one of the great pillars of the Bourse at Antwerp.  He was likewise a tolerable scholar, a detestable poet, an intriguing politician, and a corrupt financier.  He was regularly in the pay of Sir Thomas Gresham, to whom he furnished secret information, for whom he procured differential favors, and by whose government he was rewarded by gold chains and presents of hard cash, bestowed as secretly as the equivalent was conveyed adroitly.  Nevertheless, although his venality was already more than suspected, and although his peculation, during his long career became so extensive that he was eventually prosecuted by government, and died before the process was terminated, the lord of Grobbendonck was often employed in most delicate negotiations, and, at the present epoch, was a man of much importance in the Netherlands.