negotiation of a Spanish marriage. Nor were his treasure-ships safe from these audacious Dutch, who prowled about the West Indies and seized his galleons. The ships from Goa, laden with the treasures of the East, had to take a circuitous route to avoid the Dutch, who were continually on the look-out at the Cape of Good Hope. As if this was not enough, the failure of his great armada sent against England, and the ravaging of his own coasts by Essex, increased his hatred against the heretics to something like a mania.
These are sufficient reasons for accounting for the zeal of Philip II. on the subject of religion, and his blindness to the consequences of thus abandoning his empire and his people as common plunder to a merciless horde of plunderers, who bound his empire most firmly together, but it was in the bands of national ruin.
This, too, may account for his often-repeated remark that he would not shield his own son if he should incur the censure of the Inquisition. When his eldest son and heir openly avowed his hatred to the Inquisition, we find him dying a mysterious death.
It has already been remarked that there can be no such thing as reliance upon historical truth in a country where the Inquisition is in full authority. But it does not follow from this that we ought to adopt the popular surmise that Philip was privy to the murder of his son, or even that he was actually murdered.
It may have been a murder, as the inquisitorial assassins were numerous, or it may have been a natural death, as represented in books that have been published by permission of the censors. All that we know is, that his death happened advantageously for the continuance of the Holy Office.
FATE OF THE INQUISITION.
Philip III. can hardly be considered an accountable being. The same may be said of his son and of his son's sons, to say nothing of those heirs to