He succeeded in persuading the states to grant him considerable subsidies, some of which were to be paid by instalments during a period of nine years.

That was gaining a great step toward his designs, as it superseded the necessity of a yearly application to the three orders, the guardians of the public liberty.

At the same time he sent secret agents to Rome, to obtain the approbation of the pope to his insidious but most effective plan for placing the whole of the clergy in dependence upon the crown.

He also kept up the army of Spaniards and Germans which his father had formed on the frontiers of France; and although he did not remove from their employments the functionaries already in place, he took care to make no new appointments to office among the natives of the Netherlands.
In the midst of these cunning preparations for tyranny, Philip was suddenly attacked in two quarters at once; by Henry II.

of France, and by Pope Paul IV.