was the work of the Crown, and against their proceedings, wrapped in secrecy, the rights of asylum and refuge, which the fueros of the country secured in other cases to the natives and inhabitants, were of no avail. Concerning the Inquisition as in everything else, Philip had not created anything, his was not a creative genius; he had simply improved and completed the work of his ancestors, animated by the same spirit and ambition. He had only increased the authority of the Holy Office still more than his predecessors, exalting it more and more above the other tribunals, and extending and magnifying at their expense its jurisdiction and attributes; but the more he enhancedit, the more careful he was of keeping it under his immediate personal control. Nothing really important took place in that institution without the assent of the Sovereign, who in his dealings with the Holy Tribunal usually put aside his most confidential secretaries, almost always answering in his own handwriting the consultas of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition.

The kings of Spain soon perceived how great an instrument of influence and authority the Inquisition was. From this consideration they constantly disregarded the most justifiable appeals and remonstrances of their subjects, and they decided to make that powerful and dreaded tribunal still more powerful and dreaded. At Rome, on the contrary, the injured people very often found shelter and protection, in spite of the exertions of their Spanish majesties and their agents in the capital of Roman Catholicism. At the Pontifical court, far from feeling inclined to defend the exaggerations and extreme measures of the Holy Office, it was most distasteful to the Curia observe the independent spirit ecclesiastical matters osten

tatiously displayed, from the very beginning, by Spanish Inquisitors. If the Popes could have behaved with entire liberty in the first years of the institution, when they saw Torquemada and his adepts at work, its existence would have been shortlived. But the kings of Spain, just then more powerful than ever, and of whose friendship and assistance the Roman Pontiffs were much in need, were ready to protect and defend the detested institution against all comers. Their incessant and continued exertions proved most successful, and the Inquisition, every year more and more independent of Rome, was more and more subjected to the power of the Sovereigns, who availed themselves of it most unscrupulously in their politics.

Gloomy and untractable by temper, intolerant by religion, by education, and by nature suspicious, inquisitive, and vindictive, Philip the Second would have become the most accomplished of general inquisitors of the most ferocious and relentless type, had he not been seated on the throne. He could not fail to attract the entire confidence of the Holy Office, and encourage them by new privileges. The inquisitors well knew that he regarded as delightful spectacles, the autos-da-fé against the heretics. For that reason, in order to humour him, when he came back to Valladolid, his native town, in 1559, they prepared one against the Lutherans, and solemnized his return with the bonfires, at which the King assisted with great pleasure. It was then that he pronounced those well known words:-"I would, myself, carry wood to burn my own son were he such a wretch as you." you.

In all the other most memorable festivities of his reign, to celebrate the arrival at the Spanish capital or principal cities of the foreign royal brides, the Inquisitors never neglected the opportunity of giving zest to the public amusements by an auto-da-fe. The inquisitorial cruelties and procedure perfectly agreed with Philip's religious ideas, and his dissembling and tenebrous policy. When he was only prince and governor of the kingdom, he had already shown his tendencies in that direction, by restoring to the Holy Office powers, the exercise of which had been suspended by his father; and afterwards, when he became king, he confirmed them by different decrees, and more ostensibly than his predecessors he converted the Inquisition into his right arm in spiritual, secular, and most personal affairs. When by means of the civil law of the kingdom he could not reach his kingly revenge, he resorted to the Inquisition, from the snares and nets of which it was not an easy thing for an accused party to escape. He was pleased with the repetition and increase of the autos-da-fe in Toledo, Murcia, Valencia, Saragossa, Seville, and Granada; he saw with pleasure how the Inquisition chained the human thought, how it persecuted men prominent by their science and doctrine, how it prohibited books remarkable for their philosophy and erudition, and how it condemned, and put into prison their authors, on the pretended charge of teaching dangerous opinions.

The Holy Office, always jealous, severe, and suspicious of all the works which, directly or indirectly, dealt with religious subjects, became still more so when the principles of the Reformation began to be propagated throughout Europe, and to struggle with the old creed. The watchfulness of the Inquisitor increased, and, impelled by the desire of putting down Protestantism, and hindering the dissemination of the heretical poison beyond the Pyrenees-not satisfied with the prohibition of the Lutheran books

and writings, nor with the condemnation of those contained in the indices, nor with seizing and anathematizing all the books in which they discovered or suspected any maxim contrary to the Roman Church-under the royal patronage his censures gradually reached all published works, and finally, nothing could be printed without the previous approbation of the Inquisitor.

Nor did they respect even those subjects of their Catholic Majesties, who had the highest reputation for virtue, talent, and holiness, such as the venerable Juan de Avila, the learned Fray Luis Granada, Fray Luis de Leon, Sta. Theresa and St. Juan de la Cruz. Everybody feared, knowing that his works were to be examined by judges so severe and searching. And not only were works dealing with divinity, religion, and morals, subjected to such investigation, but the inquisitorial supervision extended to all writings, even to those explaining the agricultural and nautical art, as well as those intended only to amuse their readers. As it is almost impossible, taking into consideration the general affinities and relations of the different branches of human knowledge, not to mention or utter anyhow laws, or facts, premises or conclusions, more or less remotely connected with religious ideas and traditions, authors were constantly in danger of exciting the suspicions, whims, or irascible touchiness in ecclesiastical matters of the crochety or rancorous censor. And that was enough to expose him to become the innocent victim of iniquitous and mysterious proceedings, against which no one around him was daring or strong enough to protest in his favour.

Philip provoked by his measures the rebellion of the Moriscoes, and when he had put down the insurrection, he dealt out the same measure to guilty and innocent. To establish religious unity in the kingdom of Granada, his only means was to depopulate it, and the best manner of converting a race of doubtful believers into good Christians was to destroy them. Instigated by the Cardinal Espinosa, he issued in 1567 an ordinance commanding them, under the most severe punishment, to renounce their most sacred and ancient customs, and even their language, for which, within the term of three yeras, they were to substitute the Castilian language. In this determination against the Moriscoes, as in some of the most execrable and senseless resolutions of his reign, he followed the bad example of his predecessors, Ximenez de Cisneros, his father, and his father's grandfather, ouly Philip, as was usually the case with him, pushed matters a degree further. Even the Duke of Alva himself disapproved of that autocratic excess of his royal mas

ter.

He issued from his cell in the Escorial royal ordinances, not only against the insurrectionists, but also against the peaceful inhabitants who had remained loyal and obedient, "that all the inhabitants of the Alcazaba and the Albaicin, from ten to sixty years of age, should be sent violently away out of their houses, and disseminated through out the interior of the kingdom; their children of minor age to be delivered to Christians to be brought up in the faith. That all the peaceful Moors" (that is to say, all that remained obedient) "should be sent away from the kingdom of Granada and distributed throughout Castile; that all the Moriscoes, without distinction, should be locked up in the churches and then transported by gangs of 1,500, escorted by parties of soldiers to the designated districts."

Those unfortunate people were

assembled like herds of cattle, deprived of their property, torn from their hearths, and they died afterwards in the roads of hunger, fatigue, grief, and ill-treatment. Few decrees were more iniquitous, tyrannical, and cruel.

Although he had not inspired many sympathies, the people of Flanders willingly assisted Philip the Second to terminate the war with France in 1558, voting five millions of florins for that year, and no alarming signs of insurrection were noticed until he created fourteen new bishoprics, renewed the terrible imperial edicts against the heretics, attempted to establish there an Inquisition worse than that of Spain, and to interfere most outrageously with the privileges and freedom of the country. The Spanish troops remained there longer than it had been agreed; too much influence was allowed to Granvelle in the council and government; the King showed himself ready for all sorts of extremities to oblige them to accept and obey, as laws of the State, the decrees of the Tridentine Fathers.

The victor of St. Quentin and Gravelines, the two most signal battles won by Spanish armies during the reign of Philip against the traditional enemies of his ancestors, the Dukes of Burgundy, the Kings of Aragon, and the German Emperors, came to Madrid and obtained a favourable answer of the King; but at the same time that Egmontreached those countries, came orders from his Catholic Majesty to punish the heretics with more severity than before. This treacherous behaviour of the monarch irritated as much as the inquisitorial cruelties; many young noblemen entered into the Pact of Breda, confederating themselves under oath to oppose with arms in their hands the Holy Office and its edicts. Then he condescends to a

general pardon, but protesting secretly before a notary that he did not act or proceed freely and spontaneously. He wrote to his ambassador at Rome, that far from being inclined to realize the promised pardon, he was ready to ruin and destroy those States, and all the others under his rule, and to lose one hundred lives, if he had them, rather than assent to reign over heretics. Had he proposed to himself to irritate the Flemish, as he had done the Moriscoes, to push them to rebellion and exterminate them afterwards? asks the modern writer of the general history of Spain, Don Modesto Lafuente. The council of divines on the subject assembled by him, declared that, considering the situation of those provinces, he could well, with

out the least offence to God, allow them freedom of conscience, before originating the evils which a rebellion might bring on the universal Church. And he never went there, although the Princess Regent, the nobles of the land, his counsellors of Spain, the same Cardinal Granvelle, even the Pope, prayed him to go there. To all these requests he objected on the ground of penury, fever, or urgent business. Was it that he made it a case of conscience to exterminate all those who did not profess the Roman religion, and not tolerate any other cult in his States? asks again the modern Spanish historian above named.

He then sends the Duke of Alva to pacify those provinces. Really, Philip could not have found throughout all the length and breadth of his vast domains, a nobleman more favourably circumstanced for the designed task. The most illustrious ducal servant of Emperor, Pope and King,'sailed from Cartagena, the twenty-seventh of April, 1567. He landed on the friendly Genoese coast the seventeenth of the next month. There he took the command

of the expeditionary corps, composed of first-rate soldiers, magnificently arrayed in the most gorgeous martial attire of the epoch. Pius the Fifth pointed Geneva to the fanatical warriors of the Spanish monarch. That nest of Calvinism was spared. The orders received by their leader, the congenial tool of Philip, were to the effect of immediately proceeding to the Low Countries, where the old tottering faith was in need of their support.

The Mouravieff of Roman Catholic autocracy reached his destination, the Council of Blood was established at Brussels. Margaret departed from the Low Countries. Wholesale emigration, wholesale confiscation, wholesale hangings and decapitations followed the Regent's departure. The faithful subject after the heart of Philip and Pius the Fifth, was busy at work. The victor of St. Quentin and Gravelines perished on the scaffold. But the most barbarous tortures inflicted on the defenceless victims, had not the power to silence, even when at the stake, the courageous martyrs for freedom of conscience.

Alva imposed on the country the onerous duties of the hundredth, the twentieth, and the tenth on all the sales of movable and immovable property. The exaction of the twentieth and tenth forced the merchants and mechanics to close their shops and workshops. The duke immediately ordered some of them to be hanged at the doors of their shops. But the most barbarous extortions inflicted on the defenceless tax-payers had not the power to replenish the dilapidated royal exchequer. The houses of the Protestant nobles were levelled to the ground, the prisons were filled with victims, no one considered himself safe. "On Ash Wednesday, about 500 have been put into prison. ordered them all to be executed.

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