Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/553

1550.] nominate Philip as Charles's successor. Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and presumptive successor, had promised, it was said, to relinquish his pretensions in Philip's favour; and though Ferdinand disclaimed any such engagement, and his son Maximilian had no inclination to make way for his cousin, the Emperor believed that he could bear down opposition. The Pope was in his interests, and the Catholic States of Germany would act as the Pope wished; while they were secretly promised that the Lutheran divines should appear at the council, not as members upon equal terms, but as accused persons, upon their trials.

Magdeburg continuing to hold out against the Interim, was declared under the ban of the Empire. The London council having followed in the ways of Somerset, there was no longer a question of a renewal of intimacy with England. After a quarter of a century of patience Charles imagined at last that he could declare himself openly as the enemy of heresy in all its forms.

On the 29th of April, before leaving Brussels for the Diet, he issued an edict for the government of the Netherlands, which bore in time its fatal fruit in the Alva persecutions. He had done his best, he said, by moderate measures to keep his subjects to the true faith. He had learnt, to his sorrow, that not only were they infected too deeply to be cured by moderate means, but that foreigners who traded amongst