"I advised the King," says Granvelle, in a letter written a few years later, "to make no change in the placards, but to proclaim the text drawn up by the Emperor, republishing the whole as the King's edict, with express insertion of the phrase, 'Carolus,' etc.

I recommended this lest men should calumniate his Majesty as wishing to introduce novelties in the matter of religion." This edict, containing the provisions which have been laid before the reader, was now to be enforced with the utmost rigor; every official personage, from the stadholders down, having received the most stringent instructions to that effect, under Philip's own hand.

This was the first gift of Philip and of Granvelle to the Netherlands; of the monarch who said of himself that he had always, "from the beginning of his government, followed the path of clemency, according to his natural disposition, so well known to all the world;" of the prelate who said of himself, "that he had ever combated the opinion that any thing could be accomplished by terror, death, and violence." During the period of the French and Papal war, it has been seen that the execution of these edicts had been permitted to slacken.

It was now resumed with redoubled fury.

Moreover, a new measure had increased the disaffection and dismay of the people, already sufficiently filled with apprehension.