[Sidenote: State of Spain] When Philip's first parliament met, a few months after his accession, it was stated in the assembly that so terrible was the distress that "people had abandoned their lands and were now wandering on the roads, living on herbs and roots, or else travelling to provinces where they had not to pay the awful food excises and alcabalas"; whilst every source of revenue was anticipated for years to come on usurious terms.[6] Philip himself, in an important original paper hitherto unpublished (British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338), gives the following account of the state of affairs he had to face on his accession, whilst complaining of the little help he had received from his officers: "I found {51} finance so exhausted (apart from the dreadful state it had been left in at the death of Philip II., who had pledged it deeply) that all resources were anticipated for several years, and my patrimony had been so reduced that in my father's time alone 96,000,000 crowns had been granted in gifts, etc.; besides what had been spent in the other realms (_i.e._ Aragon, Catalonia, etc.), from which no returns have been received. The currency had been raised to three times its face value, an unheard-of thing in any realm.... Ecclesiastical affairs were in such disorder, that it was asserted from Rome that innumerable dispensations for simony had been obtained for archbishoprics, bishoprics, prebends, etc.... As for justice, on the very first day of my reign I was obliged to put my foot down, as will be recollected, ... for the ministers who received bribes were more numerous than those who did not ... My State, too, was so discredited that in the truce that the Dutch had made with my father they were treated as independent sovereigns, although every minister, from the King my father and the Archduke downward, refused to acknowledge such a claim.... I had only seven ships of war in the fleet.... India and the Indies were well-nigh lost.... The truce with Flanders was just expiring.... German affairs were more pressing than ever.... The marriage of the Prince of Wales with my sister was so far advanced that it seemed impossible to avoid it without a great war, which, indeed, followed, as we could not give way on the religious point.[7] Portugal was discontented {52} with the Viceroy, ... whilst all the other parts of the monarchy was neglected or misgoverned.... We were at war with Venice; the Kingdom of Naples was almost in revolt, and the money there was utterly corrupted. All this was from no fault of my father, nor of his predecessors, as all the world knows, but simply because God so ordained it."