so enormous is worse than futile.  In truth, both father and son recognized instinctively the intimate connexion between ideas of religious and of civil freedom.  “The authority of God and the supremacy of his Majesty” was the formula used with perpetual iteration to sanction the constant recourse to scaffold and funeral pile.  Philip, bigoted in religion, and fanatical in his creed of the absolute power of kings, identified himself willingly with the Deity, that he might more easily punish crimes against his own sacred person.  Granvelle carefully sustained him in these convictions, and fed his suspicions as to the motives of those who opposed his measures.  The minister constantly represented the great seigniors as influenced by ambition and pride.  They had only disapproved of the new bishoprics, he insinuated, because they were angry that his Majesty should dare to do anything without their concurrence, and because their own influence in the states would be diminished.  It was their object, he said, to keep the King “in tutelage”—­to make him a “shadow and a cipher,” while they should themselves exercise all authority in the provinces.  It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of such suggestions upon the dull and gloomy mind to which they were addressed.  It is easy, however, to see that a minister with such views was likely to be as congenial to his master as he was odious to the people.  For already, in the beginning of 1562, Granvelle was extremely unpopular.  “The Cardinal is hated of all men,” wrote Sir Thomas Gresham.  The great struggle between him and the leading nobles had already commenced.  The people justly identified him with the whole infamous machinery of persecution, which had either originated or warmly made his own.  Viglius and Berlaymont were his creatures.  With the other members of the state council, according to their solemn statement, already recorded, he did not deign to consult, while he affected to hold them responsible for the measures of the administration.  Even the Regent herself complained that the Cardinal took affairs quite out of her hands, and that he decided upon many important matters without her cognizance.  She already began to feel herself the puppet which it had been intended she should become; she already felt a diminution of the respectful attachment for the ecclesiastic which had inspired her when she procured his red hat.

Granvelle was, however, most resolute in carrying out the intentions of his master.  We have seen how vigorously he had already set himself to the inauguration of the new bishoprics, despite of opposition and obloquy.  He was now encouraging or rebuking the inquisitors in their “pious office” throughout all the provinces.  Notwithstanding his exertions, however, heresy continued to spread.  In the Walloon provinces the infection was most prevalent, while judges and executioners were appalled by the mutinous demonstrations which each successive sacrifice provoked.  The victims were cheered on their way to the scaffold.