ent that could
be devised to raise money. Offices were put up for sale to the highest
bidder. The public revenues were mortgaged. Large sums were obtained
from merchants at exorbitant rates of interest. Forced loans were
exacted from individuals, especially from such as were known to have
received large returns by the late arrivals from the New World. Three
hundred thousand ducats were raised on the security of the coming fair
at Villalon. The Regent Joanna was persuaded to sell her yearly pension,
assigned her on the _alcavala_, for a downright sum to meet the
exigencies of the state. Goods were obtained from the king of Portugal,
in order to be sent to Flanders for the profit to be raised on the
sale.[243] Such were the wretched devices by which Philip, who inherited
this policy of temporizing expedients from his father, endeavored to
replenish his exhausted treasury. Besides the sums drawn from Castile,
the king obtained also no less than a million and a half of ducats, as
an extraordinary grant from the states of the Netherlands.[244] Yet
these sums, large as they were, were soon absorbed by the expense of
keeping armies on foot in France and in Italy. Philip's correspondence
with his ministers teems with representations of the low state of his
finances, of the arrears due to his troops, and the necessity of
immediate supplies to save him from bankruptcy. The prospects the
ministers hold out to him in return are anything but encouraging.[245]

Another circumstance which made both princes desire the termination of
the war was the disturbed state of their own kingdoms. The Protestant
heresy had already begun to rear its formidable crest in the
Netherlands; and the Huguenots were beginning to claim the notice of the
French government. Henry the Second, who was penetrated, as much as
Philip himself, with the spirit of the Inquisition, longed for leisure
to crush the heretical doctrines in the bud. In this pious purpose he
was encouraged by Paul the Fourth, who, now that he was himself
restrained from levying war against his neighbors, seemed resolved that
no one else should claim that indulgence. He sent legates to both Henry
and Philip, conjuring them, instead of warring with each other, to turn
their arms against the heretics in their dominions, who were sapping the
foundations of the Church.[246]

The pacific disposition of the two monarchs was, moreover, fostered by
the French prisoners, and especially by Montmoren