Charles’s hasty departure in November, 1539, to quell the insurrection of Ghent left matters in some confusion. The Suprema, on March 20, 1540, wrote to Chancellor Granvelle that cédulas for the salaries, under the crown of Aragon, were always signed by the emperor and that the inquisitor-general could not do it; they had sent him a power for execution similar to that given to Cardinal Adrian but he had refused to sign it, saying that they could do as under Cardinal Manrique, forgetting that there had been the empress who always signed the cédulas, wherefore they ask him to get the emperor to sign the power. He doubtless did so, for an order, June 12th, on the receiver of Valencia to send fifteen hundred ducats for the salaries of the Suprema purports to be by virtue of a special power granted by their majesties. On Charles’s return he again assumed control and when he went to Italy, in 1543, he left Philip as regent, while during the absence of Philip there were successive regents who signed cédulas as called for by the Suprema.[822]
Yet, in spite of these formalities, the control of the crown was becoming scarcely more than nominal. It is true that, in 1537, Cardinal Manrique declared that he could not increase salaries without the royal assent but, when the crown undertook any exercise of power, the little respect paid to its commands is seen in the fate of an application made in 1544, by Juan Tomás de Prado, notary of the tribunal of Saragossa, to Prince Philip for an ayuda de costa of three hundred ducats. Philip ordered his prayer to be granted, but the death of Inquisitor-general Tavera served as a convenient pretext for disregarding the command. It was repeated, for the same amount, January 11, 1548, and finally, on June 4th, Inquisitor-general Valdés authorized the payment of a hundred ducats.[823]
FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
To perfect the absolute control of the confiscations, thus gradually assumed, it was necessary to keep the crown in ignorance of their amount. Its right to them was incontestable, and the Inquisition deliberately abused the confidence reposed in it when their collection was left in its hands. The less the king was allowed to know, the less likely he was to claim his share and the policy was adopted of deceiving him. As early as 1560 we have evidence of this in a letter to the inquisitors of Sicily instructing them, when reporting autos de fe to the king, to suppress all statements as to the confiscations, but to report them to the Suprema so that it may determine how far to inform him. This was doubtless a general mandate to all the tribunals; it was repeated in instructions of 1561 and we shall see that it became a settled practice.[824] This systematic concealment was the more indefensible from the fact that the Inquisition was now obtaining funds from other sources than confiscations. We shall see hereafter how it utilized the scare caused by the discovery of Protestantism in Valladolid and Seville in 1558, with the plea of additional expenses thus caused, to obtain from Paul IV a levy of a hundred thousand gold ducats on the revenues of the clergy and the more permanent endowment of a canonry to be suppressed for its benefit in every cathedral and collegiate church. A large portion of the inquisitors, moreover already held canonries and other benefices for which, under a brief of Innocent VIII, February 11, 1485, they were dispensed for non-residence.[825] The burden of the Holy Office was thus thrown largely on the ecclesiastical establishment, which remonstrated and resisted but was compelled to submit. It could thus look with equanimity on the shrinkage of the confiscations. In Valencia, an agreement was reached, in 1571, by which the Moriscos compounded for them with an annual payment to the tribunal of twenty-five hundred ducats.[826] The Judaizing heretics had been largely eliminated, especially the more wealthy ones, and it was not until some years after the conquest of Portugal, in 1580, that the influx of Portuguese New Christians brought a new and profitable harvest.
All this tended to the financial independence of the Inquisition although the crown by no means abandoned its claim on the confiscations. A book of receipts given by the royal representative in Valencia for the proceeds of the confiscations in 1593 shows that, under the financial pressure of the time, Philip II was reasserting his rights.[827] The treasury was empty when Philip III succeeded to the throne in 1598 and, among his expedients to raise money, he ordered the receivers of the tribunals to send to him all the funds in their hands, promising speedy repayment. The Suprema had no faith in the royal word and instructed the tribunals to retain enough to meet their own wants. The obedience of the tribunals was by no means prompt and the Suprema was obliged to order Valencia to comply with the royal demand and to furnish an oath that no money was left.[828]
In the earlier years of Philip IV the tendency of the Inquisition to emancipate itself from royal control grew rapidly. We shall see hereafter that when, in 1629, the king called for a statement of salaries and perquisites the Suprema equivocated and suppressed nearly all the information required. Still more significant was its attitude respecting the colonial tribunals, which the king supported under an annual expenditure of thirty thousand pesos, with the understanding that this should cease when the confiscations should become sufficient. These, which had been small at first, rapidly increased in the seventeenth century and were enormous between 1630 and 1650, when the whole trading communities of Peru and Mexico were shattered, enabling the tribunals to make permanent investments that rendered them wealthy, besides sending heavy remittances to the Suprema, which moreover seized the goods and credits in Seville of the colonial Judaizers. In addition to this, in 1627, a prebend in each cathedral was suppressed for the benefit of the tribunals. Yet the salaries were still demanded of the royal treasury and the repeated efforts of Philip III and Philip IV, from 1610 to 1650, to obtain statements of the receipts from confiscations and pecuniary penances were completely baffled. That was an inviolable secret which no royal official was allowed to penetrate. It is true that the colonial tribunals, on their side, adopted the same policy in concealing, as far as they could, from the Suprema the extent of their own gains.[829]
DEMANDS OF THE CROWN
Yet, in the ever-increasing distress of the crown, demands were made upon the Inquisition, as on all other departments of government, demands which it was forced to meet. Thus, for the ten years, 1632 to 1641 inclusive, an annual sum of 2,007,360 mrs. was required of it, to aid in defraying the cost of garrisons and fleet, and a statement of October 11, 1642, shows that it had paid the aggregate of 11,583,110 in vellon and 18,700 in silver, leaving a balance still due of 8,474,790.[830] Evidently there was good reason for concealing its revenues. In the frightful confusion of the finances which followed the revolution of Portugal and the revolt of Catalonia, in 1640, while Spain was heroically battling for existence against France and its rebellious subjects, the demands were varied and incessant—sometimes for sums so small as to reveal the absolute penury of the State—and Philip’s impatient urgency, as he chafed under the dilatoriness of the responses, shows the desperate emergencies in which he was involved. In 1643 a royal decree of February 16th ordered all officials to send their silver plate to the mint, a watch being kept and a report made so as to see that each sent a quantity proportioned to his station. To a complaint of delay in performance the Suprema replied that those who had sent in their silver could get no satisfaction from the mint—the delays were such that the promptitude required by the king was impossible.[831]
Even more arbitrary was the seizure, in 1644 at Seville, of a remittance of 8676 ducats in silver, a remittance from the colonial tribunals to the Suprema. In protesting against this the Suprema, February 29th, gave a deplorable account of its condition, owing to the demands made upon it by the king. On the 10th he had called upon it for 16,000 ducats which it would be wholly unable to raise if deprived of the silver that had been seized. It was already short in 7,724,843 mrs. of its annual expenses and the provincial tribunals were short 5,318,000, for it had impoverished them to meet the royal demands. Last year it had sold a censo of 18,000 ducats belonging to the tribunal of Saragossa, which was beseeching its return. It had also given the king 10,000 ducats for the cavalry and to raise this amount it had taken the sequestrations in the tribunal of Seville—a sacred deposit—including 20,000 ducats’ worth of wool, the owners of which, having been acquitted, were besieging it for their money. This dolorous plaint was effective in so far that