only partially enforced, and in most of the states had been controlled by the native civil tribunals; but it was concluded that Philip would inaugurate a new era of rigour, especially as he was retaining under arms in the Netherlands some 4000 Spanish infantry. Philip had to listen to some bold talk from the burghers. With him heresy had always been synonymous with resistance to authority--in his case, he thought, allied with divinity; and as he left the assembly of the States he must have made up his mind that here, in his own dominion, the hydra must be crushed at any cost. As was his wont, however, he dissembled, promised that the Spanish troops should be withdrawn, and took leave of the States with fair words. The country was to be governed in his absence by the Duchess of Parma, daughter of the emperor by a Flemish lady, and now married to that Ottavio Farnese whose dukedoms had been taken and subsequently restored to him by the Spaniards. Her principal adviser was to be the Bishop of Arras (De Granvelle). He was the third son of Charles’s favourite minister, Secretary Perrennot, a Franche-Comtois, and consequently a foreigner in Flanders. Upon him the principal brunt of his master’s unpopularity fell. His appointment as prime minister, he being a foreigner, was, said the Flemings, a violation of their rights. But Philip was immovable. He knew by the signatories of the petition for the removal of the Spanish troops that many of the principal men in the Netherlands were disaffected, and his suspicions had been aroused against those prime favourites of his father, the young Prince of Orange and Count Egmont. But he was, as usual, careful to dissemble his distrust, and left Egmont as governor of the counties of Flanders and Artois, and Orange of those of Holland, Zeeland, etc. The atmosphere in Philip’s Netherlands dominions was thus full of gathering storm when he turned his back upon them for the last time to sail for Spain (August 1559). At the last moment, as he was about to embark, his indignation at the resistance to his authority seems to have overridden his reticence. He turned to Orange and told him that he knew that he was at the bottom of the opposition he had encountered in the States-General. Orange began by laying the responsibility upon the States themselves. “No,” said Philip, “not the States, but you! you! you!” This was Orange’s first warning. In his heart he must have known now that in future it was to be war to the knife between his sovereign and himself. In any case he was prudent enough to stay on shore, and declined to accompany the other Flemish nobles on board the Spanish fleet.