It had been constantly urged upon Philip that the best way to bring the English to their knees was to stop their trade with his dominions. He had always laid it down as a rule that no ships but Spanish should be allowed to trade in the Spanish territories in America, but the English adventurers made light of the prohibition, and the settlers were quite willing to wink at their distant sovereign’s edicts, if they could profitably exchange their drugs and dyewood for the slaves which the English brought from the African coast. After Elizabeth’s seizure of Spanish property the prohibition against English trade was extended to Spain and the Netherlands. The English clothworkers grumbled, but they found new outlets for their goods at Embden and Hamburg. On the other hand, the wine-growers of Spain and the merchants of Flanders were well-nigh ruined. Spanish ships were harried off the sea, and Philip was ere long forced to connive at the violation of his own edict in face of the clamour of the Andalucian shippers, whose produce rotted for want of sea-carriage and a market. Alba held out as long as he could, but the persuasions of Orange that the Queen of England should assume the protectorate of Holland and Zeeland brought even him to his knees at last. He had always tried to make the restitution of Elizabeth’s seizures a condition of the reopening of trade, but early in 1573 he was obliged to give way, to the immense advantage of Elizabeth, who thus kept the bulk of what she had taken, whilst her subjects again obtained a free market for their cloth. This agreement alone would prove how completely Philip’s cumbrous policy of personal centralisation had failed when applied to a huge disjointed empire such as his. His selfish dread of responsibility and his constant aim of making catspaws of others had alienated him at this time from every power except perhaps for the moment the Venetians and the pope, who both had selfish reasons for adhering to him, the first as their chief bulwark against the Turk in the Mediterranean, and the latter because he was champion of the Church the world over. Alba’s policy of blood and iron had failed too, in the Netherlands. He had only succeeded in making his own and his master’s name execrated. From the day he left Spain his enemies there had been busy. In his absence the party of Ruy Gomez was almost supreme; the clever favourite had taken care to surround the king with promising young secretaries, and the failure of Alba to pacify the Netherlands was made the most of. The duke himself was heartsick of his task, crippled for want of means, his troops unpaid and mutinous, his fleet destroyed; and Holland, Zeeland, and a good part of Flanders were still in the hands of Orange. The constant dropping of detraction at last had its effect upon Philip, and he was induced to try a new policy. Alba was allowed to withdraw, with rage at his heart for his failure, which he