In this memorial, Arce alludes to a papal command, received some time before, to retire to his see of Plasencia, from which he had been absent for eight years--a favorite method, as we have seen, of getting rid of a troublesome inquisitor-general. The command had been disregarded and now it was emphatically repeated. Philip complained to his ambassador that this was even more offensive than the evocation of Villanueva's case; it would result in irretrievable damage to religion and to the state; he had asked the nuncio to suspend the order and now he requests the pope to accept Arce's resignation of his bishopric and pass the bulls of presentation for his successor. Innocent was too shrewd to forfeit his hold on his antagonist; he played fast and loose with the resignation until he had carried his point and it was not until December 2, 1652, that it was accepted and Arce's successor, the Bishop of Zamora, was preconized. Arce lost his see, but he gratefully acknowledged that Philip's liberality was such that he could forego the revenues. It must have cost the king dear, for Plasencia was one of the wealthy sees, estimated, in 1612, as worth forty thousand ducats a year.[397] [Sidenote: _VILLANUEVA'S CASE_] In spite of Arce's remonstrance, Philip yielded to the advice of his counsellors. In a letter of April 11, 1651, he announced to Infantado that orders have been given to Fonolleda to sail and deliver to him the papers. Then, with an earnestness that betrays the cost of the sacrifice, the duke is told to refresh his memory with all the arguments advanced in previous despatches and, when thus fully prepared, he is to seek an audience and express the king's mortification at being forced to submit to an innovation so unexampled and so subversive of the rights of the Inquisition. If this fails to move the pope, he is to ask that the process be returned unopened, when the Inquisition will revise the case. If this is unsuccessful he is to request that the case be referred back to the three bishops. In the event of the rejection of these proposals, the process is to be laid at the pope's feet with an exhortation to consider, before opening it, the disfavor shown to the royal person and to the kingdom of Spain, in the sight of all Christendom.[398] Philip was fairly beaten. If his humiliation was extreme it was because he had attributed such absurd adventitious importance to the question and had staked everything on a struggle in which the papacy had unquestionable right on its side. There was nothing left for him but retreat and, with curious infelicity born of weakness and obstinacy, he contrived to render his defeat as undignified as possible.