of the marriage of that prince with Anna, only sister of King Louis of Hungary.  Ten years afterwards, Ferdinand (King of Hungary and Bohemia since the death of Louis, slain in 1526 at the battle of Mohacz) was elected King of the Romans, and steadily refused all the entreaties afterwards made to him in behalf of Philip, to resign his crown and his succession to the Empire, in favor of his nephew.  With these diminutions, Philip had now received all the dominions of his father.  He was King of all the Spanish kingdoms and of both the Sicilies.  He was titular King of England, France, and Jerusalem.  He was “Absolute Dominator” in Asia, Africa, and America; he was Duke of Milan and of both Burgundies, and Hereditary Sovereign of the seventeen Netherlands.

Thus the provinces had received a new master.  A man of foreign birth and breeding, not speaking a word of their language, nor of any language which the mass of the inhabitants understood, was now placed in supreme authority over them, because he represented, through the females, the “good” Philip of Burgundy, who a century before had possessed himself by inheritance, purchase, force, or fraud, of the sovereignty in most of those provinces.  It is necessary to say an introductory word or two concerning the previous history of the man to whose hands the destiny of so many millions was now entrusted.

He was born in May, 1527, and was now therefore twenty-eight years of age.  At the age of sixteen he had been united to his cousin, Maria of Portugal, daughter of John III. and of the Emperor’s sister, Donna Catalina.  In the following year (1544) he became father of the celebrated and ill-starred Don Carlos, and a widower.  The princess owed her death, it was said, to her own imprudence and to the negligence or bigotry of her attendants.  The Duchess of Alva, and other ladies who had charge of her during her confinement, deserted her chamber in order to obtain absolution by witnessing an auto-da-fe of heretics.  During their absence, the princess partook voraciously of a melon, and forfeited her life in consequence.

In 1548, Don Philip had made his first appearance in the Netherlands.  He came thither to receive homage in the various provinces as their future sovereign, and to exchange oaths of mutual fidelity with them all.  Andrew Doria, with a fleet of fifty ships, had brought him to Genoa, whence he had passed to Milan, where he was received with great rejoicing.  At Trent he was met by Duke Maurice of Saxony, who warmly begged his intercession with the Emperor in behalf of the imprisoned Landgrave of Hesse.  This boon Philip was graciously pleased to promise, —­and to keep the pledge as sacredly as most of the vows plighted by him during this memorable year.  The Duke of Aerschot met him in Germany with a regiment of cavalry and escorted him to Brussels.  A summer was spent in great festivities, the cities of the Nether lands vieing with each other in magnificent