THE DEATHBED OF PHILIP !!.

Waikato Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3647, 16 November 1895, Page 4

THE DEATHBED OF PHILIP !!.

Weabily and slowly the great procession passed onwardfrom Madrid to the Escorial, the short distance of some 25 miles occupying no less than six days. Lying helpless in his litter, Philip 11, the ruler of such a vast empire, and the absolute master of so many millions of people, was being painfully carried to the immense structure—palace, tomb, and church—which he himself had raised, and where . 1 'he trusted that his remains might repose when he had shaken off mortality. The more ghastly symptoms of an illness that is almost unparalleled in the history of medicine commenced towards the end of July, and thence until he died Philip II was so loathsome and disgusting an object that, had he been of any but reg'il rank, he would probably, in that land where sympathy for suffering is slack, and tho approach of death a cause of terror to bystanders, have been left to end his torments without aid or assistance. Of Herod it is written that " he was eaten of worms and lie died," and the disease of the Jewish kiug is the nearest approach which is known to Philip's awful malady. Swarms of vermin that could not be extirpated battened on his living body, and for no less than 43 days did his intolerable torture last. And the great bodily pain he endured was made all the more endurable by the want of cleauliness and the confinement in a email ill-ventilated room, always crowded with priests, doctors, and attendants. But everything was done to alleviate the miseries of the royal sufferer, and the deep sympathy of all round places the death struggle of the great criminal i na very much pieasanter plane than the dying agonies of the thousands in Spain, in Flanders, and in America whom he had imprisoned fur years, tortured, and then burnt alive, amid the jeers and outcries of a ferocious ©ob. Afflicted with sores all over his back, with headache and perpetual thirst, the marvel is that, so wrung with pain and oppressed whh the horrible odours around him, he survived for so many days; and for his atteudants, the mere fact of waiting in such an atmosphere must have been a trial of no light order. Then after a long f-pell of sleeplessness, fits of drowsiness would set in, and ,these for some reason seem to have been regarded as harmful,' aad he bad to be awakened. There were placed on a table near some relics of saints, and when tho Infanta - the one-soul on earth, it is said, he really ,cared for-sawhim succumbing to sleep' she, knowing how interested her'father was in the relics, used to say in a loud tone that they were not to be touched, when at once the King would open his p.yes and look out to see it they had been removed. Tho little chamber was perfectly studded with'crucifixes and images, which also were attached ; to the bed j curtains, the King seeming to: have a 1 nervous fear that, if his gaze could not always rest on some one emblem of th 9 Christian's, creed- his soul would be eternally lost. ~ r; ■ Several days, before he, died, in« structed the friar who had the key of the . royal yaiilt to look secretly; at his father's coffin, to measure : it, and to open it and tee how the late Emperor. Charles Y had been laid, an he dp,sired to be laid in the same, manner. H« then enquired from Don Juan Ruiz de, Volasco for the crucifix and ! sbme candles of Qur hady 'Montoer* rat, which years previously be .had .shown to him. The crucifix was found, in the box, with the candles and , the scourge Charles V had used. The crucifix. was now hung inside the bed curtains close to Philip's head. As, to the candles, he instructed Don Fernando d'e Toledo to gjve him one with the crucifix just before be expired, His text curious command was that his coffin should be brought for him to see. Thewoodof which thiswasmttdehas a rather remarkable history. The beams from which the planks 'were cut' 1 had formed the keel of a great Portuguese galleon, the Cinco- Chag'ay or Five Wounds of the Redeemer. Twenty years before this the keel of a stranded vfsselhhd been left lying abandoned on the sands at Lisbon, and Philip ordered this piece of timber to be brought to the Kycorial, which was effected with much labour and a veiy heavy outlay of money. From this lo« the great cross was made 1 hat crowns the high altar in 1 the Escorial, and on this in the crucifix of gill bronze, which is over 7ft long. The tree from which this log was cut is, says Siguenza, culled the tree of Paradise; or in its own habitat in the East Indies, Angeli. The coffin was lined inside, by Philip's desire with white satin, and covered outside with a black cloth set in gold, having a cross of crimson satin, all the nails being gilt. He went carefully into the various minutiae of its appointments. As he lay in his agony, what visions may not have flitted before the dying man —the hosts of his own people whom he had tortured and sent to a miserable grave; the nob'es whom bo had beguiled to their doom aud slaughtered ; the shriekiuir women and tho innocent babes, appearing aaain in their death agonies, and denouncing him befcre high heaven fl" their foul and bloody murderer! Well might, rhe half.maddened King in his ♦error beg and implore the help of those nigh in ecclesiastical places to plead for him with the God whose every law he had *o wantonly outraged. And that these men brought him any true consolation in hw last momenta appears to have been far from the case. He lay so still that the attendants believed he had ceased to exist, and his face was now covered with a cloth But presently he started up, aud again feizni the crucifix and kissing it, fell back in agony. .And so little by iittle life flickered, and then faded out, and silently Philip II passed into the land of shadows «t 5 a. in., when the dawn was just breaking and while the choir boys of the semiwuy were chanting the Mam of Matins. He died on September ltt, 1598, on the

same day that, 14 years before, the last stono had been laid to the Escorial. Philip II departed this life, aged 72, having miserably misgoverned Spain for 43 years.-Temple Bar.