BEFORE Philip left England he drew up for the guidance of the queen and council full instructions for the administration of affairs. Minutes were sent to him of the proceedings of the meetings of the council, upon which, as was his custom during the rest of his life, he made exhaustive notes and comments.

The month after his departure he was informed by the council that the bull had been promulgated surrendering the claim to Church property alienated to private persons, and against this information the king emphatically notes that it is “well done,” but in the same document an indication is given that the zeal of the Catholic council in England is outrunning discretion, and Philip’s hand is brought down heavily in favour of cautious moderation. The proposal was that the first-fruits and tenths, and ecclesiastical revenues which had been suspended or alienated, should be brought back to their original uses. Here the king has no approving word to say. He recommends that the question should be considered by a committee of eight councillors, who should report to him for decision. He then goes on to urge caution, and to direct that the Government should not propose any measure to Parliament until it had been submitted to him. He evidently dreaded the rash zeal of the Catholic party in England, and did his best to hold it in check; but before he had been gone from England six months Renard’s prophecy came true, and the flames of persecution burst out, to be extinguished no more until the death of the queen. Philip was certainly not responsible for this; his influence was exerted in the contrary direction.

Religious persecution was with him simply a matter of political expediency, and in the existing state of affairs it was the most injudicious thing in the world for the Catholic party in England to run to extremes. Philip was a cold-blooded statesman, and was never really blinded by religious zeal. That he was a deeply religious man, according to his narrow view, with an all-consuming belief in the identity of interests between himself and the Almighty, is certain; but his motive was never the exaltation of the Church itself, or even of Catholicism, except as the most convenient instrument for establishing the political predominance of Spain over the rest of the world.

What Philip wanted of the English councillors was not the hellish bonfires of Smithfield, but ships and men with which to fight the French. Here the fervid churchmen were not so ready. The English navy, the council told Philip, was unfit for sea; but the best of the ships, with the pick of the sailors and soldiers on board, should as soon as possible be sent to guard the Channel. This was not enough for the king, who wrote (September 1555) a vigorous marginal note on the minute, saying that “England’s chief defence depends upon its navy being always in good order to serve for the defence of the kingdom against all invasion. It is right that the ships should not only be fit for sea, but instantly available.” He wishes the fleet to be put in order, and sent, not to Dover but to Portsmouth, as the emperor is going to Spain in November, and wishes twelve or fourteen ships to accompany him beyond Ushant. This was, of course, the thin end of the wedge. What Philip really wanted, as will be seen, was to employ the English fleet against France.

On the much-desired arrival of Philip in Brussels he found the great emperor a prey to the last extreme of mental and bodily senile depression. Things had been going from bad to worse with Charles almost uninterruptedly since the defection of Maurice of Saxony in 1552. “Fortune is a strumpet,” he cried at his disaster before Metz, “and reserves her favours for the young.” And so to the young Philip he had determined to shift the burden he himself could bear no longer.

The emperor’s principal embarrassments had occurred in Italy. It will be recollected that Naples and Sicily belonged to the crown of Spain by conquest, and that the dukedom of Milan, a vacant fief of the empire, had been conferred upon Philip. Charles’s warlike and turbulent representatives in these states had plunged him into endless troubles, first by their encroachment on the principalities of Parma and Piacenza, belonging to the papal Farneses, and, secondly, by the seizure of the republic of Siena. The discontent caused by these encroachments was taken advantage of by the French king to side with the Italians against their suzerain, the emperor. The French already held Piedmont, one of the fiefs of the empire, and now expelled the imperialists from Siena. The Pope and the Duke of Florence, who had hitherto been neutral, then sided with the French; the populations of Milan and Naples cried aloud against the oppression they suffered from the Spanish governors, and the Spanish imperial domination of Italy seemed tottering to its fall. The Spanish governors were hastily changed, and an arrangement patched up with the Medicis. Thenceforward the war was carried on against the French in Italy with varying success, the Turks frequently making diversions on the coast in the interest of France. The imperial and Spanish officials in the various states of Italy were quarrelling with each other in face of the common enemy, and all was in confusion when Philip made his marriage journey to England. It was then decided by the emperor to transfer to his son the crowns of Naples and Sicily, and the dukedom of Milan, with which he had been nominally invested in 1546, and the act of abdication of these dominions was read in Winchester Cathedral before the marriage ceremony. This was doubtless intended as a first step towards the old project of transferring to Spain the suzerainty of the empire over Italy, as Philip bad also received a transference of the rights of the emperor over Siena as soon as the republic had been recaptured from the French. It will thus be seen how anomalous was Philip’s position in Italy. He was independent King of Naples, a tributary prince of the empire in Milan, and a substitute for the emperor in his suzerainty over Siena. The imperial troops in Milan had hitherto been a coercive power over the other imperial fiefs, but they could no longer be so regarded, as they were the forces of a Spanish prince, who in Milan was himself a tributary prince of the empire, with no rights over the rest. Philip soon found that it was practically impossible to govern from England his Italian states in this complicated condition of affairs, and in November 1554 appointed Alba with very full powers to exercise all his sovereignties in Italy, with supreme command of the army. The emperor did not like the idea. We have seen the opinion he held of Alba and how he dreaded making so great a noble too powerful, and it was only with great difficulty that he consented. Alba had been Philip’s principal mentor in England, chafing at being kept away from the wars, and condemned to humiliating subordination in a country he hated; but it may safely be assumed that this was not the only reason why Philip decided to remove him from his side.

Already the two political parties which were in after years alternately to influence Philip were being developed. Ruy Gomez de Silva, his bosom friend, upon whom he had bestowed the hand of the greatest heiress of Spain, and whom soon afterwards he was to load with titles, was an hidalgo of Portuguese birth, ten years older than his master. According to all contemporary accounts never was royal favour better deserved. No person has an ill word for Ruy Gomez. Gentle, conciliatory, modest, and diplomatic, he was the very antithesis of the haughty and intolerant Alba, and found himself constantly at issue with him on every political point under discussion. His views and methods were more in consonance with those of Philip than were the harsh and violent counsels of the warlike Alba. He was, moreover, nearer the king’s age, and possessed his real regard. It is not surprising, therefore, that when an opportunity came for the removal of Alba from the king’s side, Ruy Gomez and his friends urged it; and in December 1554 the favourite himself went from England to Brussels to persuade the reluctant emperor to consent to the appointment. Alba’s administration of Italy opened an entirely new page in the relations between Spain, Italy, and the papacy, to which reference will be made in its proper place.

On October 25, 1555, the renunciation by the emperor of the sovereignty of the Netherlands took place in the great hall of the palace of Brussels. The scene, one of the most dramatic in history, has often been described, and need not here be repeated. All the circumstances added impressiveness and solemnity to the ceremony. The prematurely aged emperor, standing on a dais, leaning on the shoulder of the youthful William the Silent, in a broken voice took leave of the Flemish subjects, whom he loved best. He had always been a Fleming at heart, and the leave-taking was an affecting one on both sides. Philip, on the other hand, was to all intents a foreigner, and though Charles fervently prayed his son to treat his people well, the Flemings present knew that his heart and sympathies were in Spain, and that Philip might be a ruler over them, but never a friend and father, as the emperor had been. Philip’s own impassibility for once gave way at the affecting scene, and for some time he could not summon sufficient composure to speak; and when he did, alas! it was only to confess that, as he could not address his new subjects in their own tongue, he must depute the task to another. We may be sure that the Bishop of Arras—the coming De Granvelle—was elegant, fluent, and appropriate in his speech; but the charm that loosely held together the states under the House of Burgundy was broken, and the sturdy burghers felt that henceforward they were to be regarded as a colony of Spain. On January 16, 1556, the crowns of Spain were also transferred to Philip, and Charles remained now only emperor nominally, until the German electors were prepared for the abdication in favour of Ferdinand. Before he left for Spain and turned his back upon the world for ever, he arranged (February 1556) a truce for five years, by the treaty of Vaucelles, with his old antagonist the King of France.

Philip now stands on the stage alone, the greatest monarch in the world, although disappointed of the apostolic crown. We have seen how his statecraft had been formed, and how from his childhood he had absorbed the worldly experience of his father. We can see how he had schooled himself to self-repression, concentration of effort to political ends, and profound distrust in all men. To his melancholy mysticism and belief in his divine inspiration, the result of his descent, had been superadded the teachings of his mentors, and the result was the man who was to lead to defeat one of the two great forces into which the world was divided. The judgment on a great historical figure must be pronounced, not in view of what he achieved, so much as what he aimed at, and in the case of Philip the objects were great. These objects were not, however, conceived by him, but were imposed upon him by the accident of birth. He accepted the inheritance as a sacred duty and strenuously did his best, but his inherited personal qualities were not equal to his inherited task, and he failed.

The irony of events decreed that the very first task to which Philip was to put his hand was to fight with the Holy See. Charles and his predecessors had wrested from one pontiff after another the rights of presentation to all bishoprics, prelacies, and other preferments of the Church in Spain, so that the Spanish clergy depended now upon their sovereign more than upon the pope, and the king practically used the vast revenues of the Church as an instrument of his policy. The royal council, moreover, had the power of supervision over the ecclesiastical courts in Spain, nominally to protect Spanish priests from injustice, but really to make the civil power supreme, and give to the State a predominance over the Church. The Inquisition itself was quite as much a political as an ecclesiastical institution, and was jealously regarded by Philip and his predecessors as under their immediate control, and not that of the pope. Similar, and even greater power, was exercised by the king over the Spanish Church in Naples and Sicily, to the exclusion of papal influence. These facts, together with the encroachments of the Spaniards in Italy, had been suffered with a bad grace by previous pontiffs, but Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV., was a Neapolitan, and a deadly enemy of the Spanish power, and immediately after his accession began to intrigue with the King of France to join with him for the purpose of expelling the Spaniards from Naples, and curbing their power in Italy generally. The arrogant and intemperate pontiff launched against the emperor and his son invective more bitter even than he did against heretics. “The Spaniards,” he was wont to say, were “the vile and abject spawn of Jews, the dregs of the world,” and “now the time had come when they should be castigated for their sins, be expelled from their states, and Italy should be free.” The aid of the Grand Turk was also invoked, and Henry II., tempted by the bait of conquering Naples by such a coalition, signed the treaty with the pope in December 1555.

The emperor’s one desire, however, was to leave his son at peace, and he offered such terms that in February 1556 Henry II. withdrew from the papal alliance and signed the truce of Vaucelles. The defection of the French was only a temporary check to the fiery pontiff. Before four months had passed he had persuaded the King of France once more to enter into an offensive alliance with him, and the Sultan Solyman, to fight against the Catholic king. Wherever the pope’s voice or arm could reach, persecution and insult were heaped upon Spaniards. When once he had prevailed upon the King of France to break the truce of Vaucelles he thought he had his enemy at his mercy. All bounds of decency and decorum were abandoned, and a violent bull of excommunication was issued against the emperor and King Philip. The latter is addressed as “the son of iniquity, Philip of Austria, offspring of the so-called Emperor Charles, who passes himself off as King of Spain, following in the footsteps of his father, rivalling, and even endeavouring to surpass him in infamy.”[1] Alba invaded the papal states, and nearly captured Rome itself, carrying fire and sword through Italy; but he was well matched by Guise, who commanded the Franco-Papal army. Then suddenly Henry II. found that the army from Flanders was marching on Paris, and Guise was recalled to France. By the intervention of the Doge of Venice a peace was patched up between the pope and Philip, Alba sulkily entering Rome, not as a conqueror but as a pretended penitent. The pope was conciliated with ceremonies and futile concessions, and France and Philip were again left face to face.

During the new coalition against him Philip had again urged the English council to join him in the war against France, but could get no satisfactory reply. The poor queen was wearing her heart away with sorrow and disappointment, and the English Catholics in power, from Pole downwards, were determined not to serve purely Spanish aims or allow themselves to be diverted from the holy task of extirpating heresy, so the king, sorely against his will, was obliged, himself, to go to England and exert his personal influence.