The Councils, then, depending as they did on the royal will, were filled for the most part with the obsequious servants of a suspicious master who could ruin them at his pleasure, unless, indeed, as was sometimes the case, they were able to spread a net of intrigue round the King which he was, for a time at least, unable to break. If Philip usually asked the advice of his Councillors, he kept to his father’s injunction, ‘to depend on no one but himself.’ He did not often appear at their sessions; sometimes he altered despatches before submitting them to his Councils; he generally received their opinions through a committee, or more often demanded a written report, which he took to his private cabinet and annotated with marginal comments. True to his boast, that ‘with a bit of paper he ruled over both hemispheres,’ he sat at his desk for hours together, sometimes assisted by a secretary, sometimes by his favourite daughter Isabella, often quite alone, and covered the state papers with notes in his crabbed hand with the assiduity of a clerk, and not uncommonly with trivialities, of which a schoolboy might be ashamed. Under these circumstances the actual authority exercised by any individual depended on his personal influence, and that of his clique, with the King. Although Philip would allow his ministers considerable latitude as long as he trusted them, his suspicions were easily aroused. He made use of one minister against another; he learnt from each severally the views and opinions of the others; he adopted the same system of espionage with regard to them as he did, through his secret emissaries, abroad, and his suspicion once aroused, the fall of the minister or viceroy was not far off. | The chief ministers. | The Duke of Alva. | Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli. | Cardinal Espinosa.