which, owing to his procrastination, was not fulfilled till October 1560--but the other grievances he did not deign to notice. Sooner than reign over heretics, he declared to his ministers he would rather not reign at all; while the opposition shown to the foreigner caused him to remark: ‘I, too, am a foreigner; will they refuse to obey me as their Sovereign?’ Having thus disregarded the complaints of his people, Philip left the Netherlands never to return again, after accusing William of Orange, if we may credit a contemporary writer, of being the real mover in the opposition which had shown itself in the States-General. | Philip’s scheme of ecclesiastical reform. The departure of the King was followed by another measure which seriously aggravated the discontent. The ecclesiastical organisation of the Netherlands was very imperfect. There were only three sees--Arras, Tournay, and Utrecht, and their dioceses were far too large to be efficiently administered. That of Utrecht alone included three hundred walled towns and eleven hundred churches. The other parts of the Netherlands were either under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cambray, a free imperial city, or under that of foreign Bishops such as Liège, while the duchy of Luxemburg formed part of four foreign dioceses. The confusion and conflicts with regard to appeals were further increased by the fact that these bishoprics were under the jurisdiction of foreign metropolitans: the two first being subject to the archbishopric of Rheims, Utrecht to that of Cologne. Charles V. himself had planned a reform; time, however, and opportunity failed him, and it was left to Philip to carry it out on a more extended basis. The number of the bishoprics was to be increased to fifteen; they were to be freed from all foreign control, and to be organised under three archbishoprics--Mechlin, Cambray, and Utrecht, of which Mechlin, with Granvelle as its archbishop, was to enjoy the primacy; the requisite revenues were to be supplied from the abbey lands within each diocese, and the abbeys to be placed under priors dependent on the bishops: each bishop was to appoint nine additional prebendaries, two of whom were to be Inquisitors and to assist him in the work of rooting out heresy. The announcement of this scheme was met with a storm of opposition from Catholic and Protestant alike. The bishops, it was declared, would be the creatures of the crown; while the abbots, whose place they were to take, had been elected by the monks, and had represented the local interests in the provincial assemblies and in the States-General. The appropriation of the revenues of the abbeys was denounced as an act of spoliation, by the nobles especially, whose sons had often filled the place of abbot. The more careless and ignorant of the clergy feared the stricter supervision and discipline which would ensue. Above all, the measure was condemned as an attempt to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. It