The native aristocracy was indeed represented in the Council of State, but there were foreign councillors as well, and one of them, Cardinal Granvelle, had Philip's ear. It was he who governed the Regent--Marguerite of Parma, a natural daughter of Charles V.--and to all intents and purposes the country was ruled from Madrid. Hence not a little heartburning. Meanwhile the new doctrine was rapidly making headway. The number of Protestants amongst the working population of the great cities must at this time have been considerable; there were thousands in all classes halting between two opinions, and honest men all over the country, who had no sympathy with the tenets proscribed, were sickened and astounded at the cruel rigour with which Charles's 'placards' were being now enforced, and in the midst of it all, and in spite of the opposition of Granvelle himself, Philip took a step which he ought to have known would be certain to breed trouble: he obtained from Pope Paul IV. a Bull (1562) to increase the number of bishoprics from three to fifteen, and the measure was at once opposed by all sorts and conditions of men:--by the secular clergy, because they believed that the presence of so many bishops amongst them would lessen their prestige; by the monks, who knew they would be shorn of revenue for the endowment of the new Sees; by the nobles, who regarded the great abbeys as the appanage of their younger sons; by the people, who were firmly convinced that this step was only the prelude to further persecution; and opposition was increased tenfold when presently it became known that the proposed metropolitan See of Mechlin was to be confided to Cardinal Granvelle. Philip, however, refused to draw back; but, so threatening was the attitude of the nobles, that at last, at the request of the Regent herself, he consented to Granvelle's resignation (1564), though almost immediately afterwards he gave orders that the edicts against heresy should be enforced with increased rigour. Then, on the 15th of February 1565, came the famous _Compromis des nobles_, and a petition for the redress of grievances, which was presented to the Regent two months later by a deputation of four hundred gentlemen, many of whom were Catholics, with a request that she would transmit it to Philip, and which he in due course refused. '_Ne vous inquiétez pas ce ne sont que des gueux_,' the Lord of Berlaymont had whispered to Marguerite, dismayed at the long line of petitioners who solemnly filed before her in the great hall of the Coudenberg; and that night, at a banquet in the palace of the Lord of Culembourg, now the prison of the Petits Carmes, they made this term of reproach their _signe de ralliement_; they were 'gueux,' they said, 'et fidèles au roi jusqu'à la besace.' They proved it by scattering seditious pamphlets broadcast all over the country, and the following year--the _wonder jaar_, as it was afterwards called--the Calvinist mob began to purge the land of idols.