The president of the council of Italy, after Granvelle's death, was
Quiroga, cardinal of Toledo, and inquisitor-general. Enormously long
letters, in the King's: name, were prepared chiefly by the two
secretaries, Idiaquez and Moura. In their hands was the vast
correspondence with Mendoza and Parma, and Olivarez at Rome, and with
Mucio; in which all the stratagems for the subjugation of Protestant
Europe were slowly and artistically contrived. Of the great conspiracy
against human liberty, of which the Pope and Philip were the double head,
this midnight triumvirate was the chief executive committee.

These innumerable despatches, signed by Philip, were not the emanations
of his own mind. The King had a fixed purpose to subdue Protestantism
and to conquer the world; but the plans for carrying the purpose into
effect were developed by subtler and more comprehensive minds than his
own. It was enough for him to ponder wearily over schemes which he was
supposed to dictate, and to give himself the appearance of supervising
what he scarcely comprehended. And his work of supervision was often
confined to pettiest details. The handwriting of Spain and Italy at that
day was beautiful, and in our modern eyes seems neither antiquated nor
ungraceful. But Philip's scrawl was like that of 'a' clown just admitted
to a writing-school, and the whole margin of a fairly penned despatch
perhaps fifty pages long; laid before him for comment and signature by
Idiaquez or Moura, would be sometimes covered with a few awkward
sentences, which it was almost impossible to read, and which, when
deciphered, were apt to reveal suggestions of astounding triviality.

Thus a most important despatch--in which the King, with his own hand, was
supposed to be conveying secret intelligence to Mendoza concerning the
Armada, together with minute directions for the regulation of Guise's
conduct at the memorable epoch of the barricades--contained but a single