Philip II of Spain

1527 – 1598 · Generation XXIII · King of Spain

Philip II, king of Spain from 1556 and of Portugal from 1580, was born at Valladolid on 21 May 1527, the son of the emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Unlike his Flemish-born father he was brought up as a Spaniard, by Spanish tutors, and Castilian remained the only language he spoke with ease. His mother died when he was eleven. Charles prepared him early for rule. He left him written instructions that stressed piety, patience, modesty and distrust of advisers, and from 1543 he made him regent of Spain whenever the emperor was abroad. A tour of Italy, Germany and the Netherlands between 1548 and 1551 went less well, for the reserved prince made a poor impression on the German and Flemish nobles.

He married four times. His first wife, his cousin Maria Manuela of Portugal, died in 1545, four days after giving birth to their son Don Carlos. In 1554 his father arranged a second match with Mary I of England, eleven years his senior. They were married at Winchester Cathedral on 25 July 1554, and for the four years of the marriage Philip bore the title of king of England, though with tightly limited powers. Mary died childless in 1558, ending his connection with the English crown. His third wife, Elisabeth of Valois, was given to him by the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with France in 1559 and bore his daughters Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catherine Michaela. His fourth, his niece Anna of Austria, whom he married in 1570, was the mother of his successor, Philip III.

Charles handed over his inheritance piece by piece. Philip had Milan from 1540, Naples and Sicily in 1554, the Netherlands in October 1555 and the crowns of Spain with their American empire in January 1556. He inherited a war with France, in which his armies won at Saint-Quentin in 1557, and a treasury so burdened with debt that his government suspended payments to its creditors that year. Further suspensions followed, among them those of 1575 and 1596. In 1559 he went home to Spain and never left the Iberian peninsula again. He settled the court at Madrid in 1561 and between 1563 and 1584 built El Escorial, part palace and part monastery, in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama. He governed from a small study and on paper, reading the reports of his councils and deciding each matter, or putting it off, himself. People at the time complained that the method clogged a government already known for delay. He also distrusted those who served him best, and Alba and Don John of Austria were among the able men who fell from favour.

Philip understood his task as the defence of Catholic Europe. In 1566 he wrote to his ambassador in Rome that he would sooner lose all his states than rule over heretics. Against the Ottomans the policy brought success. The Holy League’s fleet under his half-brother Don John of Austria destroyed most of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto in 1571. In the Netherlands it brought disaster. Resentment of taxation and of the persecution of Protestants broke into image-breaking riots in 1566, the Duke of Alba’s harsh repression followed, and from 1568 Philip faced a revolt he could never put down. The northern provinces were lost to him for good. At home the Moriscos of Granada rose in 1568–70 and were dispersed to other provinces, and his heir Don Carlos died in confinement in 1568.

After the young King Sebastian of Portugal died without heirs in 1578, and his elderly successor Cardinal Henry in 1580, Philip pressed his claim as a grandson of Manuel I, sent Alba’s army across the border and became king of Portugal as well, uniting the whole peninsula under one ruler. The conquest of the Philippines, named in his honour, was completed in his reign. England and France increasingly aided the Dutch rebels, and in 1588 he launched the Armada to carry the Army of Flanders across the Channel. It failed to join up with the army and was wrecked by storms on the voyage home, and two further fleets, in 1596 and 1597, were driven back by storms. He also poured money and troops into the French Catholic League, yet in 1598 had to accept Henry IV as king of France at the Peace of Vervins.

Philip died at El Escorial on 13 September 1598, aged seventy-one, after a long illness that was probably cancer. Protestant Europe remembered him through the “Black Legend” as a cruel fanatic, a caricature he never troubled to answer. In Spain he is sometimes called el Prudente, “the Prudent.” He lived plainly, loved books and paintings and was a fond father to his daughters, and he left Spain at the height of its power and deeply in debt.

Place in the family

• Philip II of Spain married Queen Mary I, a daughter of King Henry VIII.

Images

• Philip as a prince of about twenty-four, in parade armour, painted by Titian in 1551. (Titian, public domain)
• Philip’s portrait on a silver one-fifth Philipsdaalder struck in Guelders in 1566, the year unrest broke out in the Netherlands. (Numisantica, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL)
• El Escorial, the monastery-palace Philip built between 1563 and 1584, in a view painted by Michel-Ange Houasse around 1722. (Michel-Ange Houasse, public domain)
• English ships engaging the Spanish Armada in August 1588, in an anonymous painting made soon after the event. (Unknown artist, public domain)

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

• Married Queen Mary I (1516 – 1558) in 1554

Life

• 1527 — Born
• 1554 — Married Mary I Tudor
• 1598 — Died

Sources

1. Philip II of Spain · Wikipedia
2. Philip II (king of Spain and Portugal) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. Felipe II · Real Academia de la Historia, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico
4. Spain: Philip II · Encyclopaedia Britannica
5. Spanish Armada · World History Encyclopedia