In estimating the conduct of the minister, in relation to the provinces, we are met upon the threshold by a swarm of vague assertions which are of a nature to blind or distract the judgment.  His character must be judged as a whole, and by its general results, with a careful allowance for contradictions and equivocations.  Truth is clear and single, but the lights are parti-colored and refracted in the prism of hypocrisy.  The great feature of his administration was a prolonged conflict between himself and the leading seigniors of the Netherlands.  The ground of the combat was the religious question.  Let the quarrel be turned or tortured in any manner that human ingenuity can devise, it still remains unquestionable that Granvelle’s main object was to strengthen and to extend the inquisition, that of his adversaries to overthrow the institution.  It followed, necessarily, that the ancient charters were to be trampled in the dust before that tribunal could be triumphant.  The nobles, although all Catholics, defended the cause of the poor religious martyrs, the privileges of the nation and the rights of their order.  They were conservatives, battling for the existence of certain great facts, entirely consonant to any theory of justice and divine reason—­for ancient constitutions which had been purchased with blood and treasure.  “I will maintain,” was the motto of William of Orange.  Philip, bigoted and absolute almost beyond comprehension, might perhaps have proved impervious to any representations, even of Granvelle.  Nevertheless, the minister might have attempted the task, and the responsibility is heavy upon the man who shared the power and directed the career, but who never ceased to represent the generous resistance of individuals to frantic cruelty, as offences against God and the King.

Yet extracts are drawn from his letters to prove that he considered the Spaniards as “proud and usurping,” that he indignantly denied ever having been in favor of subjecting the Netherlands to the soldiers of that nation; that he recommended the withdrawal of the foreign regiments, and that he advised the King, when he came to the country, to bring with him but few Spanish troops.  It should, however, be remembered that he employed, according to his own statements, every expedient which human ingenuity could suggest to keep the foreign soldiers in the provinces, that he “lamented to his inmost soul” their forced departure, and that he did not consent to that measure until the people were in a tumult, and the Zealanders threatening to lay the country under the ocean.  “You may judge of the means employed to excite the people,” he wrote to Perez in 1563, “by the fact that a report is circulated that the Duke of Alva is coming hither to tyrannize the provinces.”  Yet it appears by the admissions of Del Ryo, one of Alva’s blood council, that, “Cardinal Granvelle expressly advised that an army of Spaniards should be sent to the Netherlands, to maintain the obedience to his Majesty