Philip, as he assumed possession of the lives of millions, is characterized by Motley[A] as “a small meager man, much below middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. In face, he was the living image of his father, having the same broad forehead and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better-proportioned, nose. He had the same heavy hanging lip, with a vast mouth and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry. Such,” adds Motley, “was the personal appearance of the man who was to receive into his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present, of many more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn.”
Yet it may be doubted whether in the assembly present on that memorable occasion there was a single person who even dimly perceived the enormity of this idea. That a nation, without being consulted, should be transferred like a herd of cattle from one owner to another, for his own use and emolument and even to be slaughtered at his will, probably seemed a natural and right proceeding. The fact emphasizes the immense and profound change that during the ensuing fifty years was to take possession of men’s imagination. The seventeenth century was to see a new idea of the rights of nations and of the relations that should govern a people and its rulers; the commencement, in fact, of a new era of thought in its bearing on life. But as yet the minds of all engaged in the ceremony were possessed with the old thought, the brute survival of Roman imperialism and of the medieval conflict of rival autocrats; the claim of a pope to exercise supreme sway over the consciences of innumerable millions, and the contention of temporal potentates for absolute control over the souls and bodies of their subjects. Thought and life had been, and still were, based upon the supremacy of the favored individual.