of bills of exchange. These were issued June 14th, after which there was a pause, explicable only by the lavish employment of money in both Lisbon and Rome. The New Christians evidently had obtained knowledge of the threatened measure; much of the active capital of the kingdom was in their hands, and the danger called for energetic work and sacrifice. A fitting emissary to Rome was found in Duarte da Paz, a Converso of no ordinary ability, energy and audacity; the king was entrusting him with a mission beyond the borders, under cover of which he made his way to the papal court, where for ten years he continued to act as agent for his fellows. Then, in September, there came Marco della Rovere, Bishop of Sinigaglia, sent as nuncio on this special business, who was speedily bought by the New Christians, and they probably won over by the same means the Frade Diogo da Silva, who complicated matters irretrievably by refusing to accept the office of inquisitor-general. Duarte da Paz also was not idle, and the confusion became inextricable when, by a brief of October 17th, Clement VII suspended temporarily the one of the previous December, and prohibited not only da Silva but all bishops from proceeding inquisitorially against the New Christians.[684] As we have seen in Spain, the curia recognized that here was a numerous and wealthy class of heretics, to whom it could sell protection and then abandon them, until their fears or their sufferings should produce a new harvest. This speculation in human agony was all the more undisguised and lucrative that Portugal was a comparatively feeble kingdom, which could be treated with much less ceremony than Spain, and João III a man of wholly different type from Ferdinand or Charles V, while his invincible determination to have an Inquisition in his realm prolonged the struggle and rendered especially productive the game of inclining to either side by turns. This was so self-evident that João almost openly reproached Clement VII with it, and the committee of Cardinals entrusted with the conduct of the affair rejoined that inquisitors were ministers of Satan and inquisitorial procedure a denial of justice.[685]