Innocent either was taking malicious pleasure in exciting hopes and then disappointing them or else he was using the position to obtain diplomatic advantage in the growing tension between the courts over the Barberino marriage of the grand-daughter of his brother--a transaction in which he complained that the Spanish ministers had almost threatened him and that no present had been sent on the occasion. Cabrera's letters of December, 1652 and the first half of 1653 report a series of tergiversations and of promises made and broken by Innocent which show that to him Villanueva was merely a pawn in the game between Rome and Madrid.[402] [Sidenote: _VILLANUEVA'S CASE_] Villanueva died in Saragossa, July 21, 1653. In his will, executed the day before, he made ample provision for the salvation of his soul, and San Placido was in his mind to the last, for he appointed as its patron his nephew Gerónimo and his descendants, or in their default his niece Margarita and her descendants, they being the principal heirs of his large estate. The only change which this brought into the affair was that the Inquisition proposed to take advantage of the opportunity to commence a new prosecution against his fame and memory--apparently with the double purpose of vindicating its jurisdiction and, by sequestrating his property, of restraining the family, who continued their efforts in Rome for a vindication. Fortunately for them, Alexander VII, who saw in such action an invasion of his jurisdiction, prohibited, in 1656, this cowardly profanation of the ashes of the dead and when, with quenchless malignity, Arce, in 1659, sought to get this prohibition removed, the attempt was unsuccessful.[403] It is scarce worth while to follow in detail the further weary progress of this affair, in which Spanish tenacity was pitted against the wily diplomacy of Rome. Pertinacious efforts continued for years to get the case remitted back, or at least to have the papers returned, in order to create the belief that it had been remitted. Stimulated by energetic instructions of August 24, 1658 from Philip, his ambassador Gaspar de Sobremonte had a stormy interview with Alexander VII, in which the pope finally told him that the case had never been considered by the Congregation of the Inquisition and that the king must content himself with the brief of October 12, 1652. To this Sobremonte retorted that that brief settled nothing, when the pope said vaguely that he would see whether any satisfaction could be given to the Inquisition. So it continued until Alexander, grown weary of the urgency which promised to be interminable, cut it short, March 29, 1660, by a brief to the king in which he said that the case had been finally concluded by Innocent X, as appeared from his letters to Philip and Arce of March 12 (October 12, 1652). There was nothing more to be said about it, as would be fully explained by the Archbishop of Corinth, the nuncio, to whom full credit was to be given.[404]