History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

first suggestion had come, and in the breasts of the
little coterie that met at the dosing sessions of the
Council. But a paper by one of the secretaries of
Cardinal Boromeo, since given to the world, has
published on the housetops what was then spoken
in whispers in the cabinets of kings or the
conclaves of ecclesiastical synods. "First, in order
that the business may be conducted with the greater
authority, they" (the Fathers of the Council)
"advise to commit the superintendence of the
whole affair to Philip the Catholic king, who ought
to be appointed with common consent the head and
conductor of the whole enterprise." The Catholic
king was to begin by preferring a complaint to his
neighbour, Anthony Bourbon, King of Navarre,
"that, contrary to the institutions of his
predecessors, he entertains and nourishes a new
religion." Should the King of Navarre turn a deaf
ear to this remonstrance, Philip was to essay him
"by fair promises to draw him off from his wicked
and unhappy design." He was to hold out to him
the hope of having that portion of his ancestral
dominions of which he had been stripped, restored,
or an equivalent given him in some other part of
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