These innumerable despatches, signed by Philip, were not the emanations of his own mind.  The King had a fixed purpose to subdue Protestantism and to conquer the world; but the plans for carrying the purpose into effect were developed by subtler and more comprehensive minds than his own.  It was enough for him to ponder wearily over schemes which he was supposed to dictate, and to give himself the appearance of supervising what he scarcely comprehended.  And his work of supervision was often confined to pettiest details.  The handwriting of Spain and Italy at that day was beautiful, and in our modern eyes seems neither antiquated nor ungraceful.  But Philip’s scrawl was like that of ‘a’ clown just admitted to a writing-school, and the whole margin of a fairly penned despatch perhaps fifty pages long; laid before him for comment and signature by Idiaquez or Moura, would be sometimes covered with a few awkward sentences, which it was almost impossible to read, and which, when deciphered, were apt to reveal suggestions of astounding triviality.

Thus a most important despatch—­in which the King, with his own hand, was supposed to be conveying secret intelligence to Mendoza concerning the Armada, together with minute directions for the regulation of Guise’s conduct at the memorable epoch of the barricades—­contained but a single comment from the monarch’s own pen.  “The Armada has been in Lisbon about a month—­quassi un mes”—­wrote the secretary.  “There is but one s in quasi,” said Philip.

Again, a despatch of Mendoza to the King contained the intelligence that Queen Elizabeth was, at the date of the letter, residing at St. James’s.  Philip, who had no objection to display his knowledge of English affairs—­as became the man who had already been almost sovereign of England, and meant to be entirely so—­supplied a piece of information in an apostille to this despatch.  “St. James is a house of recreation,” he said, “which was once a monastery.  There is a park between it, and the palace which is called Huytal; but why it is called Huytal, I am sure I don’t know.”  His researches in the English language had not enabled him to recognize the adjective and substantive out of which the abstruse compound White-Hall (Huyt-al), was formed.

On another occasion, a letter from England containing important intelligence concerning the number of soldiers enrolled in that country to resist the Spanish invasion, the quantity of gunpowder and various munitions collected, with other details of like nature, furnished besides a bit of information of less vital interest.  “In the windows of the Queen’s presence-chamber they have discovered a great quantity of lice, all clustered together,” said the writer.

Such a minute piece of statistics could not escape the microscopic eye of Philip.  So, disregarding the soldiers and the gunpowder, he commented only on this last-mentioned clause of the letter; and he did it cautiously too, as a King surnamed the Prudent should:—­