of Aragon. The popularity
which she acquired by the conquest of Granada, the religious furor
excited by that successful war, and the union with Aragon, enabled her
to establish the Inquisition. By means of her priests associated in its
gloomy tribunals she was able to suppress popular rights. A shadow of
the _Fueros_ of Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon still remained, but
she had sapped the foundation on which they rested by the establishment
of the Holy Office. Charles V. was sufficiently powerful to disregard
such humble instrumentalities in carrying out any purpose he deemed to
be of advantage to his states. He was not a bigot by education, and we
have to look to disappointed ambition as the cause of the virulence
with which he persecuted the least indication of heresy. He had been
thwarted in his ambitious schemes; this he attributed to the
Reformation, which he himself had fostered at its beginning, in order
to sow discord among the princes of Germany. He had hoped that upon
their mutual jealousy he might establish despotic authority; but the
treason of Maurice of Saxony had subverted his darling scheme at the
moment of its apparent success, and in disgust he retired from public
life to spend the remainder of his days in recruiting his health and
cursing the heretics.

PHILIP II. AND THE INQUISITION.

The Inquisition burned with renewed flames under Philip II. from
precisely the same cause that had made it tolerable to his father. To
the troubles caused by the Reformation he attributed the election of
his uncle Maximilian "King of the Romans," and his own consequent loss
of the Germanic empire. But, as a compensation for this loss, he had
substantially acquired England by his marriage with Queen Mary, and had
the satisfaction of having his soldiers mingled with those of England
in his war against France, and of seeing his own Archbishop of Toledo
preside in the tribunal that condemned to the flames the Protestant
bishops of England. The _autos da fe_ of Smithfield were weeding out
heresy and liberty from England, which he already began to look upon as
a province of his empire, when his wife died, and the avowed heresy of
Elizabeth blasted his hopes in that quarter. The heretic Prince of
Nassau had raised insurrection in the Netherlands, which deprived him
of Holland. When the French Catholic League, which he had so long
subsidized, was about to declare him, or at least his daughter,
sovereign of France, the rel