Palafox was Bishop of Angelopolis, and in that capacity he attempted to make the Jesuits pay his see the just tithes on the property they inherited. They replied with abuse, and he then inquired by what authority they preached and heard confessions in his diocese. They arrogantly boasted of their special privileges, and refused to show the documents, as they had a further privilege excusing them from doing so; a claim which the Pope afterwards declared to be false. Palafox informed the faithful that they had no powers for the ministry. At this the Jesuits produced another of their remarkable privileges--the power to appoint judges of the difference--and paid 4000 crowns each to two Dominican monks of Mexico city to come and arbitrate. The viceroy also was bribed, and the two monks were led into Angelopolis with a great parade of trumpeters and guards. A notice was soon posted at the street corners to the effect that the Bishop of Angelopolis was deposed and excommunicated for his improper conduct, and, in June 1647, Palafox fled to the hills from the growing violence. On 31st July, the feast of St. Ignatius, a carnival-procession, starting from the Jesuit house, bore round the town the most ribald, and even obscene, caricatures of the bishop's office. Numbers of his supporters were banished, and bands of soldiers and Jesuit spies wandered about the hills in search of the wretched hut where Palafox was hidden. All these details are submitted to the Pope in the bishop's letters, and, in order to make them intelligible, a remarkable account is given of the worldly prosperity of the fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of the wealth of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep,[31] besides cattle and other property. They own six large sugar-refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own only three small refineries. They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops and butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually intrigue for legacies--a woman has recently left them 70,000 crowns--and they refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this authoritative description that the Jesuit congregations at Rome were still periodically forbidding the fathers to indulge in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely maintain that the Society never engaged in commerce. It should also be added that the missionaries were still heavily subsidised by the King of Spain, that there were (the bishop says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their establishments, and that they conducted only ten colleges.