Yet the fires of persecution were not permitted wholly to slumber. The historian of the Reformation enumerates seventeen who suffered capitally for their religious opinions in the course of the year 1564.[628] This, though pitiable, was a small number--if indeed it be the whole number--compared with the thousands who are said to have perished in the same space of time in the preceding reign. It was too small to produce any effect as a persecution, while the sight of the martyr, singing hymns in the midst of the flames, only kindled a livelier zeal in the spectators, and a deeper hatred for their oppressors. [Sidenote: THE REGENT'S EMBARRASSMENTS.] The finances naturally felt the effects of the general disorder of the country. The public debt, already large, as we have seen, was now so much increased, that the yearly deficiency in the revenue, according to the regent's own statement, amounted to six hundred thousand florins;[629] and she knew of no way of extricating the country from its embarrassments, unless the king should come to its assistance. The convocation of the states-general was insisted on as the only remedy for these disorders. That body alone, it was contended, was authorized to vote the requisite subsidies, and to redress the manifold grievances of the nation.--Yet, in point of fact, its powers had hitherto been little more than to propose the subsidies for the approbation of the several provinces, and to _remonstrate_ on the grievances of the nation. To invest the states-general with the power of _redressing_ these grievances would bestow on them legislative functions which they had rarely, if ever, exercised. This would be to change the constitution of the country, by the new weight it would give to the popular element; a change which the great lords, who had already the lesser nobles entirely at their disposal,[630] would probably know well how to turn to account.[631] Yet Margaret had now so entirely resigned herself to their influence, that, notwithstanding the obvious consequences of these measures, she recommended to Philip both to assemble the states-general and to remodel the council of state;[632]--and this to a monarch more jealous of his authority than any other prince in Europe! To add to the existing troubles, orders were received from the court of Madrid to publish the decrees of the Council of Trent throughout the Netherlands. That celebrated council had terminated its long session in 1563, with the results that might have been expected,--those of widening the breach between Protestant and Catholic, and of enlarging, or at least more firmly establishing, the authority of the pope. One good result may be mentioned, that of providing for a more strict supervision of the morals and discipline of the clergy;--a circumstance which caused the decrees to be in extremely bad odor with that body.