James Edwin Thorold Rogers

“ Charles was not slow to persecute the Reformers in the Netherlands, though he had to temporise with them in Germany. But the former country was his patrimony; in the latter he was only an elective sovereign, with rights limited by the powers of the independent princes of the empire, and he therefore could not do as he pleased. Under the rule of his sister, the Dowager of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, the persecution of the sectaries was organized in that country. There was no part of the world in which so many persons were put to death for their religion as in the Netherlands. ”

“ The three nations over whom he was destined to rule hated each other cordially. There was antipathy from the beginning between Flemings and Spaniards. The Netherlands nobles were detested in Spain, the Spaniards in the Low Countries were equally abhorred. Again the Spaniards entreated Charles not to accept his election to the German throne. Charles had employed his Flemish nobles in Spain, and they had disgusted the Spaniards by their ambition and rapacity. The Spaniards feared that they would become a mere outlying province of the German Empire, and be plundered by German adventurers. ”

“ This was the principal reason why the European sovereigns insisted on conformity, and visited those whom they were pleased to call heretics with severer punishments than they inflicted on traitors.
It cannot be by accident that the most successfully industrious parts of Europe have been, with but one notable exception, hostile to the established religion. ”