Philip’s cruelty may be further illustrated by one act of his domestic administration; for he added his own son, and heir to his throne, to the number of his victims. Don Carlos being shocked at the cruelties exercised by the duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands, [see Chapter VII.] at the entreaty of several nobles, desired a commission to govern that country, as viceroy, that he might give toleration to those who rejected the domination of the Pope. But his father, attended by several of his privy counsellors and twelve guards, entered his chamber in the middle of the night, seized him, and threw him into prison. The nation was astonished at this outrage against the prince; and the Emperor Maximilian besought Philip to set him at liberty; but in vain. A junta, of whom the inquisitor-general was president, was appointed to try Don Carlos; and he was kept in close confinement. None were allowed to visit him, not even the queen, or the princess, Donna Juana, lest the complaints of the prince should become public; those officials only, with one physician, were permitted to see him, who were appointed by the king. Philip himself dared not see him, fearing the reproaches of the injured prince; and he appears to have been secretly murdered,--the prevailing opinion is, by poison,--July 24, 1568, at the age of twenty-three years! Philip would never satisfy the public regarding the particulars of the prince’s death. De Castro says, “Don Carlos fell a victim to his desires to banish from Flanders the horrors of the Inquisition, and set all men’s consciences free in matters of religion. The greatest crime of which Carlos was held by his father, the palace favourites, and the inquisitors, to be guilty, was that of entertaining Protestant doctrines. This was the report in and out of Spain. There is one circumstance which confirms the opinion that Don Carlos was murdered, _viz._, that the Marquis de Bergnes died in the court under the suspicion of having been poisoned; the Baron de Montigny was secretly beheaded in the palace of Segovia, and the Counts of Egmont and Horn perished on a scaffold, before the populace of Brussels,--all of them for their secret correspondence with Don. Carlos!”