Philip was now the ruler of what may be termed a kingdom of several peoples, who, though in a measure distinct, were of similar temperament and character, and who may be counted now as one. Never has conqueror been in a happier position when faced with the problem of welding together his conquests. {5} For Philip ruled those whose interests were similar, and whose characteristics were almost identical--a people born of the sea, strong and fearless, who had lived by strife with their fellows and by strife with Nature; a people born to toil and to hardship, whose battle for life had been with Nature herself--a race which for centuries had fought with swamp and water year in, year out, conquering a mile of morass or patch of barren furze, striving for the soil to live upon, working not for gold, but for life. This nation had now become a power of natural strength and of dominating physique, virile and live and expansive, whose sons, with brooms at their mastheads, should later sweep the seas from whose destructive embrace she had succeeded in wresting herself. Under the rule of the Burgundian the prosperity of the Netherlands rapidly increased. In Holland and in Flanders, in Brabant and in the other leading provinces, industry and wealth, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, were ever augmenting. While Philip, in the zenith of his power, flushed with the passion and success of territorial acquisition, busied himself with the glorification of his sovereignty by founding at Bruges, amid a {6} scene of indescribable splendour, the Order of the Golden Fleece, "to the honour of God, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the holy Andrew," a principle more potent than even territorial power was evolving. For in Haarlem an undistinguished sexton wrestled with the intricacies of the printing-press. Lorenz Coster was printing his book of the Dutch language. The question as to the time and place of the invention of printing will probably never be settled to the satisfaction of Holland and Germany; but the men of Haarlem still claim upon very sound and substantial evidence that between 1423 and 1440 their citizen was the first to employ movable type, which is generally considered the invention of printing proper, as distinguished from the more ancient block-printing.