r this mystery with much simplicity.
"His Majesty knew," he said, "that I should oppose it, as it was more
honorable and lucrative to be one of four than one of eighteen." In fact,
according to his own statement, he lost money by becoming archbishop of
Mechlin, and ceasing to be Bishop of Arras. For these reasons he
declined, more than once, the proffered dignity, and at last only
accepted it from fear of giving offence to the King, and after having
secured compensation for his alleged losses. In the same letter (of 29th
May, 1560) in which he thanked Philip for conferring upon him the rich
abbey of Saint Armand, which he had solicited, in addition to the
"merced" in ready money, concerning the safe investment of which he had
already sent directions, he observed that he was now willing to accept
the archbishopric of Mechlin; notwithstanding the odium attached to the
measure, notwithstanding his feeble powers, and notwithstanding that,
during the life of the Bishop of Tournay, who was then in rude health, he
could only receive three thousand ducats of the revenue, giving up Arras
and gaining nothing in Mechlin; notwithstanding all this, and a thousand
other things besides, he assured his Majesty that, "since the royal
desire was so strong that he should accept, he would consider nothing so
difficult that he would not at least attempt it." Having made up his mind
to take the see and support the new arrangements, he was resolved that
his profits should be as large as possible. We have seen how he had
already been enabled to indemnify himself. We shall find him soon
afterwards importuning the King for the Abbey of Afflighem, the enormous
revenue of which the prelate thought would make another handsome addition
to the rewards of his sacrifices. At the same time, he was most anxious
that the people, and particularly the great nobles, should not ascribe
the new establishment to him, as they persisted in doing. "They say that
the episcopates were devised to gratify my ambition," he wrote to Philip
two years later; "whereas your Majesty knows how steadily I refused the
see of Mechlin, and that I only accepted it in order not to live in
idleness, doing nothing for God and your Majesty." He therefore
instructed Philip, on several occasions, to make it known to the
government of the Regent, to the seignors, and to the country generally,
that the measure had been arranged without his knowledge; that the
Marquis Berghen had known of it