If the sky was overcast in the Netherlands, it was almost as lowering in Spain itself; and this was a matter which lay nearer still to Philip’s heart. The country had been governed during the king’s absence by his sister, the widowed Princess Juana of Portugal, as regent. Civil affairs had shown no decided change. The money that flowed from the Indies had been mostly seized and squandered upon the foreign wars, and on one occasion the Seville merchants had ventured to remonstrate. But their leaders had been loaded with irons and cast into prison, and henceforward the people patiently bore their burden. Religious matters, however, were in a less satisfactory condition. It has already been observed that the policy of Charles and Philip had always been to bring the Church in Spain under subjection to the monarch, and to weaken the control of Rome over it. The ecclesiastical benefices were now practically all at the disposal of the sovereigns, and were distributed to a large extent with political objects, pensions and payment for national purposes frequently being charged upon episcopal, and other revenues, as a condition of presentation of a benefice. The royal council had assumed the power of reviewing the decisions of ecclesiastical tribunals, and the same civil power had now claimed the right of suspending the publication of papal bulls in Spain. For some years a controversy had been in progress with the papacy as to the right of the crown to insist upon the execution of a decision of the Council of Trent with regard to the reformation of the Spanish cathedral chapters, which had become very corrupt. The pope had considered this an interference with his prerogative, and had summoned to Rome the Spanish bishops who championed the right of the monarch over the Church. The royal council suspended the papal bulls and forbade the bishops to obey the pope’s summons. Paul IV. was furious, and this was one of the reasons for his attempts to ruin the Spanish power. When he fulminated his famous excommunication of Philip already mentioned, the king retorted by ordering through the Regent Juana that all the pope’s messengers bearing the bulls into Spain should be captured and punished. The council next recommended that Philip should insist upon all papal nuncios to Spain being Spanish prelates, and that they should be paid by the pope and not by the king. It did not, however, suit Philip to proceed too violently against the Church, upon which he knew he must depend largely as an instrument of his policy. When in 1557 he consented to the undignified peace with Paul IV., who had been so bitter an enemy to him, proud Alba said that, if he had had his way, he would have made Caraffa go to Brussels to sue the king for peace instead of Philip’s general having to humble himself before the churchman.