interest, had outvoted the milder councils of the Prince Ruy Gomes of
Eboli, the Count of Feria, and the king's confessor, Fresneda. The
insurrection, it was urged by the former, was indeed quelled for the
present, but only because the rebels were awed by the rumor of the
king's armed approach; it was to fear of punishment alone, and not to
sorrow for their crime, that the present calm was to be ascribed, and
it would soon again be broken if that feeling were allowed to subside.
In fact, the offences of the people fairly afforded the king the
opportunity he had so long desired of carrying out his despotic views
with an appearance of justice. The peaceable settlement for which the
regent took credit to herself was very far from according with his
wishes, which sought rather for a legitimate pretext to deprive the
provinces of their privileges, which were so obnoxious to his despotic
temper.

With an impenetrable dissimulation Philip had hitherto fostered the
general delusion that he was about to visit the provinces in person,
while all along nothing could have been more remote from his real
intentions. Travelling at any time ill suited the methodical regularity
of his life, which moved with the precision of clockwork; and his narrow
and sluggish intellect was oppressed by the variety and multitude of
objects with which new scenes crowded it. The difficulties and dangers
which would attend a journey to the Netherlands must, therefore, have
been peculiarly alarming to his natural timidity and love of ease. Why
should he, who, in all that he did, was accustomed to consider himself
alone, and to make men accommodate themselves to his principles, not his
principles to men, undertake so perilous an expedition, when he could
see neither the advantage nor necessity of it. Moreover, as it had ever
been to him an utter impossibility to separate, even for a moment, his
person from his royal dignity, which no prince ever guarded so