The new taxes and excises, which the sanguinary extravagance of the duke rendered necessary, could seldom be collected in the various cities without tumults, sedition, and bloodshed.

Few princes were ever a greater curse to the people whom they were allowed to hold as property.
He nearly succeeded in establishing a centralized despotism upon the ruins of the provincial institutions.

His sudden death alone deferred the catastrophe.

His removal of the supreme court of Holland from the Hague to Mechlin, and his maintenance of a standing army, were the two great measures by which he prostrated the Netherlands.

The tribunal had been remodelled by his father; the expanded authority which Philip had given to a bench of judges dependent upon himself, was an infraction of the rights of Holland.