The people of the North, whose moral fiber was still vigorous, and who retained their respect for established religion, could not tolerate the cynicism with which Machiavelli analyzed his subject from the merely intellectual point of view.

His name became a byword.

'Am I Machiavel ?' says the host in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_.

Marlowe makes the ghost of the great Florentine speak prologue to the _Jew of Malta_ thus-- I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
When the Counter-reformation had begun in Italy, and desperate efforts were being made to check the speculative freedom of the Renaissance, the _Principe_ was condemned by the Inquisition.

Meanwhile it was whispered that the Spanish princes, and the sons of Catherine de' Medici upon the throne of France, conned its pages just as a manual of toxicology might be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers.