The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1561-62 | Page 9

such horrible penalties by the edicts. The inquisitorial
system of Spain was hardly necessary for men who had but little
prudence in concealing, and no inclination to disavow their creed. "It is
quite a laughable matter," wrote Granvelle, who occasionally took a
comic view of the inquisition, "that the King should send us depositions
made in Spain by which we are to hunt for heretics here, as if we did
not know of thousands already. Would that I had as many doubloons of
annual income," he added, "as there are public and professed heretics in
the provinces." No doubt the inquisition was in such eyes a most
desirable establishment. "To speak without passion," says the Walloon,
"the inquisition well administered is a laudable institution, and not less
necessary than all the other offices of spirituality and temporality
belonging both to the bishops and to the commissioners of the Roman
see." The papal and episcopal establishments, in co-operation with the
edicts, were enough, if thoroughly exercised and completely extended.
The edicts alone were sufficient. "The edicts and the inquisition are one
and the same thing," said the Prince of Orange. The circumstance, that
the civil authorities were not as entirely superseded by the Netherland,
as by the Spanish system, was rather a difference of form than of fact.
We have seen that the secular officers of justice were at the command

of the inquisitors. Sheriff, gaoler, judge, and hangman, were all
required, under the most terrible penalties, to do their bidding. The
reader knows what the edicts were. He knows also the instructions to
the corps of papal inquisitors, delivered by Charles and Philip: He
knows that Philip, both in person and by letter, had done his utmost to
sharpen those instructions, during the latter portion of his sojourn in the
Netherlands. Fourteen new bishops, each with two special inquisitors
under him, had also been appointed to carry out the great work to
which the sovereign had consecrated his existence. The manner in
which the hunters of heretics performed their office has been
exemplified by slightly sketching the career of a single one of the
sub-inquisitors, Peter Titelmann. The monarch and his minister
scarcely needed, therefore, to transplant the peninsular exotic. Why
should they do so? Philip, who did not often say a great deal in a few
words, once expressed the whole truth of the matter in a single sentence:
"Wherefore introduce the Spanish inquisition?" said he; "the inquisition
of the Netherlands is much more pitiless than that of Spain."
Such was the system of religious persecution commenced by Charles,
and perfected by Philip. The King could not claim the merit of the
invention, which justly belonged to the Emperor. At the same time, his
responsibility for the unutterable woe caused by the continuance of the
scheme is not a jot diminished. There was a time when the whole
system had fallen into comparative desuetude. It was utterly abhorrent
to the institutions and the manners of the Netherlanders. Even a great
number of the Catholics in the provinces were averse to it. Many of the
leading grandees, every one of whom was Catholic were foremost in
denouncing its continuance. In short, the inquisition had been partially
endured, but never accepted. Moreover, it had never been introduced
into Luxemburg or Groningen. In Gelderland it had been prohibited by
the treaty through which that province had been annexed to the
emperor's dominions, and it had been uniformly and successfully
resisted in Brabant. Therefore, although Philip, taking the artful advice
of Granvelle, had sheltered himself under the Emperor's name by
re-enacting, word for word, his decrees, and re-issuing his instructions,
he can not be allowed any such protection at the bar of history. Such a
defence for crimes so enormous is worse than futile. In truth, both
father and son recognized instinctively the intimate connexion between

ideas of religious and of civil freedom. "The authority of God and the
supremacy of his Majesty" was the formula used with perpetual
iteration to sanction the constant recourse to scaffold and funeral pile.
Philip, bigoted in religion, and fanatical in his creed of the absolute
power of kings, identified himself willingly with the Deity, that he
might more easily punish crimes against his own sacred person.
Granvelle carefully sustained him in these convictions, and fed his
suspicions as to the motives of those who opposed his measures. The
minister constantly represented the great seigniors as influenced by
ambition and pride. They had only disapproved of the new bishoprics,
he insinuated, because they were angry that his Majesty should dare to
do anything without their concurrence, and because their own influence
in the states would be diminished. It was their object, he said, to keep
the King "in tutelage"--to make him a "shadow and a cipher," while
they should