Philip II, King of Spain and sovereign of the Netherlands, was above all a Spaniard. Educated in Spain, he found himself unable to understand the Belgians as his father had. He did not appreciate their pride, their deep love of liberty, and their respect for the privileges granted them. An autocratic king, he was haughty as only a Spaniard can be. Deeply convinced of the superiority of Catholicism, and possessing principles absolutely rigid in character, he was incapable of compromise--in short, a real bigot. In political affairs he endeavored to arrange every detail himself, and personally to read piles of dispatches by the light of a candle in his dark room in the Escurial. He labored day and night, constantly immersed in thought, and was remarkably slow in reaching a decision. When, however, his mind was finally made up, it was usually too late. Events had progressed in the meantime and when his orders reached the theater of war they could not be carried out, since the situation had entirely changed. That slowness of decision brought him many disasters. Nevertheless, he was an excellent father to his children, and there are extant letters written by him to his daughters, in which it is difficult to recognize the lonely thinker of the Escurial. He paid a short visit to his subjects in the Netherlands at the beginning of his reign (1557), but left no sympathetic impression behind. His sister, Duchess Margareta of Parma, remained in the country to govern the people during his absence. He was absent to the end. His Flemish subjects never saw him again. From Madrid he directed the affairs of the Belgians, and studied the dispatches which reached him every week. Margareta, offspring of the amour of Emperor Charles V with the daughter of a Flemish upholsterer from Audenaerde, had been educated for a time in Brussels and had then gone to Italy, where she successively married Alessandro de’ Medici and Ottavio Farnese, the latter being Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Although of masculine character, loving sport and exercises, Margareta possessed the feminine characteristics of vanity and shrewdness. She had acquired in Italy a disposition to engage in _combinazione_, and succeeded in playing the game often under very difficult circumstances. Philip of Spain left her as an assistant in her political councils a man of real diplomacy, Cardinal de Granvelle. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Burgundian in origin, was a loyal servant of his master. He was the man of the _raison d’état_. Philip II never had a more faithful minister. Granvelle desired only the welfare of the King and of the state he represented, and was heroic enough to assume the responsibility for the drastic measures taken by his sovereign. He was a man of real political genius, clear-sighted, absolutely unselfish. The main object of his political plans was that Spain should rule the seas, and it was he who urged Philip II to send the famous Armada against England.