of securing the English Crown to his own House without a final effort; and he now proposed that the Princess Elizabeth should be betrothed to his nephew, the Archduke Ferdinand. But in return for the accession of territory and influence that would thus accrue to the Austrian branch, he insisted that Philip should receive for Italy the title of "Vicar of the Empire," implying the delegation of the supreme imperial power. The objections of Ferdinand prevented the public execution of this stipulation, which was however later secretly carried out. For a time, indeed, it was currently reported that Ferdinand's succession to the Empire itself was in jeopardy; a coolness arose between the two brothers; and when on October 25, 1555, Charles made a formal surrender at Brussels of his Flemish provinces to his son, neither the King of the Romans nor his son Maximilian appeared in the august assemblage. The ceremony took place in the Town Hall of the capital, where Charles, taking his seat on his throne, with Philip on his right hand and Mary, the late Regent of the Low Countries, on his left, and surrounded by his nobles and ministers of State and the delegates of the provinces, formally ceded to his son, the "King of England and of Naples," the entire surrounding territories—"the duchies, marquisates, principalities, counties, baronies, lordships, villages, castles, and fortresses therein, together with all the royalties."
It can scarcely be deemed surprising if, amid these new and vast responsibilities, Philip's insular kingdom and its lonely Queen might seem at times forgotten; or that Charles, whose design it had been to set out for Spain as soon as possible, found his departure unavoidably retarded until the year 1556 was far advanced. But in the February of that year the Truce of Vaucelles ended for a time the hostilities with France, Henry thereby retaining possession of the entire territories of the Duke of Savoy. With his habitual want of good faith, however, the French monarch did not scruple, whenever an opportunity presented itself, still secretly to foment insurrection against both Philip and Mary in their respective domains.
At length, on August 9, the Emperor finally quitted Brussels, and embarked, a month later, for Spain. His departure was pathetically deprecated and deplored by Mary, who, now guided almost solely by Pole, had during the previous year been directing her main efforts to the suppression of heresy within her realm.
The entire number of those who thus suffered during her reign was less than 400,—a number which appears small when contrasted with the thousands who had already died in a like cause in Provence, or who were destined to do so in the Low Countries. But the social eminence, high character, and personal popularity of not a few of the English martyrs, unalloyed, as in many cases these qualities were, with political disaffection, served to invest their fate with a peculiar interest in the eyes
