To the end of this miserable business their conduct was repulsive. The municipality of Thorn was, of course, condemned to compensate the Society for the destruction of the college, and they secured a preposterous award of 36,400 florins. The citizens warmly protested against this scandalous and onerous award, and it was eventually, in spite of the protests of the Jesuits, reduced to 22,000 florins. The Jesuits, we are assured whenever they plead bankruptcy, are too spiritual to be good men of business, but their attitude in regard to the loss of their property at Thorn was not weakened by spirituality. They demanded (and, no doubt, needed) 8000 florins in cash. The municipal authorities had not so large a sum to pay them, and it was advanced by a merchant on the security of the plate of the executed Mayor of the town. For the remainder of the debt the Jesuits took the municipal estates of Lonzyn and Wengorzyn. They retained these profitable estates for six years, and only yielded them when the civic authorities paid them the full capital of the debt with 6 per cent. interest for the intervening years. The situation of the Jesuits in Holland was, we saw, in many respects similar to their situation in England, but the fact that several provinces remained Roman Catholic gave them an advantage and kept the country open to them. Utrecht, for instance, had only joined the other provinces on condition that full liberty was given to Catholics and Jesuits. From these Catholic districts the fathers advanced with great zeal upon the neighbouring Protestant population. In spite of Jesuit hatred of the Dutch, whom they represent throughout the seventeenth century as the arch-enemy, they were treated with indulgence until their own actions brought punishment on them. We saw that there was at least evidence enough to convince the Dutch that the Jesuits had been implicated in two attempts to assassinate their rulers, and when, in 1638, a Catholic plot to admit the Spaniards was discovered, another storm against the Jesuits arose. Their apologist admits that there was a plot, and that they were aware of it; but he finds no evidence that they were parties to the plot. The evidence on which the Dutch relied was supplied by a soldier, and is not in itself very impressive; but several of the fathers were tortured and executed. The feeling seems to have been that any plot to introduce the Spaniards would very probably be of Jesuit origin, and the evidence was sufficient in the circumstances. Few will seriously feel that there was a miscarriage of justice.