Philip was left a widower for the third time in 1568, at the age of forty-two, with two children, both girls, by his beloved third wife. With such an empire as his, and with his views of his mission, it was most undesirable that he should be succeeded by a female, and especially one of French extraction, and he had already recognised this by causing some of his young Austrian nephews to be brought up in Spain under his influence. The emperor, however, largely dependent as he was upon the Lutheran princes, could not look quite unmoved at Alba’s barbarities in the ancient patrimony of his House, and became uncomfortably pressing upon the matter at the commencement of Alba’s rule. Philip resented his interference, but thought well to disarm him for the future by marrying the Archduchess Anne, the emperor’s daughter, whom her father had so persistently put forward as a bride for the unfortunate Carlos. The preliminaries were easily arranged. Philip was more than double the bride’s age, and was her uncle, but that mattered nothing. The pope’s dispensation was obtained, and in August 1570 the new consort travelled in state through Flanders to take ship for Spain. The fleet which was to escort the queen was a powerful one, and threw Elizabeth of England into a fever of alarm until it had safely passed. On her way through Antwerp the new queen was appealed to by the sorrowing mother of Horn and Montigny. Her eldest son had fallen on the scaffold, but her second was alive, a prisoner in the castle of Segovia. He had been smiled upon by Philip until Alba’s blow had fallen upon his brother and the rest of the Flemish nobles, and had then suddenly been imprisoned. He was innocent of all offence, said his mother, a loyal subject, and a good Catholic, and she prayed the queen earnestly to plead for her son. Anne arrived at Santander on October 12, 1570, and slowly progressed through Spain to Segovia for the wedding. For two years the tribunal of blood in Flanders had been trying the Flemish nobles for treason _in absentia_. Bergues had died in semi-arrest, and faithful Renard, the victim of Granvelle’s hate, had also died mysteriously a week after his imprisonment. But Montigny--Florence de Montmorenci--still remained in seclusion in the strong castle of Segovia. Philip was always a stickler for the fulfilment of legal forms, and awaited the result of the trial in Flanders with ill-disguised impatience. At last the decision came, the finding being that which might have been foreseen. Montigny was condemned for treason in defending the action of the Flemish nobles before the king’s secretary. The judgment was submitted to the council--Ruy Gomez, Espinosa, and the rest of the camarilla--who advised that Montigny should be poisoned slowly. But no, the king would have none of that. The law prescribed death by strangulation for the crime, and the law must be carried out. A public execution was out of the