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.

No man saluted the governor as he passed through the streets.  Hardly an attempt was made by the people to disguise their abhorrence of his person:  Alva, on his side, gave daily exhibitions of ungovernable fury.  At a council held on 25th September, 1571, he stated that the King had ordered the immediate enforcement of the edict.  Viglius observed that there were many objections to its form.  He also stoutly denied that the estates had ever given their consent.  Alva fiercely asked the President if he had not himself once maintained that the consent had been granted!  Viglius replied that he had never made such an assertion.  He had mentioned the conditions and the implied promises on the part of government, by which a partial consent had been extorted.  He never could have said that the consent had been accorded, for he had never believed that it could be obtained.  He had not proceeded far in his argument when he was interrupted by the Duke—­“But you said so, you said so, you said so,” cried the exasperated Governor, in a towering passion, repeating many times this flat contradiction to the President’s statements.  Viglius firmly stood his ground.  Alva loudly denounced him for the little respect he had manifested for his authority.  He had hitherto done the President good offices, he said, with his Majesty, but certainly should not feel justified in concealing his recent and very unhandsome conduct.