Philip’s fourth wife was a devout, homely, prolific creature, intensely devoted to her husband and children, of whom she bore many, though most of them died in early childhood. “She never leaves her rooms, and her court is like a nunnery,” wrote the French ambassador. All around her was frigid, gloomy etiquette and funereal devotion. As years and disappointments gathered on Philip’s head his religious mysticism deepened. “For God and your Majesty,” was now the current phrase in all addresses to him. He never gave an order--hardly an opinion--without protesting that he had no worldly end in all his acts. It was all for the sake of God, whose instrument he was. For his own part, his life was a constant round of drudgery and devotion. The smallest details of government went through his hands, besides the most trivial regulations with regard to the lives and habits of his subjects. Their dress and furniture were prescribed with closest minuteness, their styles of address, number of servants and horses, their amusements, their funerals, their weddings, their devotions were settled for them by the gloomy recluse whom they rarely saw. Whilst he was busy with such puerilities, affairs of great moment were set aside and delayed, his ambassadors in vain praying for answers to important despatches, his armies turning mutinous for want of money, and his executive ministers through his wide domains alternately despairing and indignant at the tardiness of action which they saw was ruining the cause he championed.