It only remains for us to note cursorily such indications as have reached us of the activity and condition of the Inquisition in the several provinces of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In Savoy, as we have seen, the bitter contest with the Waldenses kept it in fair working condition, while it was gradually falling into desuetude elsewhere, although in Lombardy it still, for a while, maintained its terrors. We have a somewhat vague description of its sleepless vigilance in 1318, in pursuing certain heretics who are described as Lollards--whether Begghards or Waldenses does not appear, but probably the latter, as we are told that when concealment became impossible the men escaped to Bohemia, leaving some women with children at the breast, whereupon the women were burned, and the children given to good Catholics to be brought up in the faith. In 1344 we hear of a great popular excitement, caused by the belief that a number of victims of the Inquisition had suffered unjustly. Matters went so far that the Imperial Vicar, Lucchino Visconti, asked Clement VI. to order an investigation, which was duly held, though we do not know the result. It was possibly the feeling thus aroused which led, in 1346, to the murder in the Milanese of a Franciscan inquisitor conspicuous for his persecuting zeal. The perpetual troubles during the century between the Holy See and the Visconti cannot but have greatly interfered with the efficiency of persecution. In the collected statutes of the Dukes of Milan from 1343 to 1495 there is no allusion of any kind to the Inquisition, or to the punishment of heretics. There is, however, on record a decree of 1388 placing the civil officials at the service of the Inquisition, but it enforces the conditions of the Clementines, which require episcopal consent to the use of torture and harsh prison, and to the final sentence. It moreover threatens inquisitors with punishment for using their office to extort money or gratify malice; and it further significantly commands them not to abuse the privilege of armed familiars, or to unnecessarily multiply their officials. How the political passions of the time hindered the functions of the Holy Office is seen in the case of Frà Ubertino di Carleone, a bustling Franciscan, subsequently Bishop of Lipari, who, about 1360, was accused of heresy by the Inquisitor of Piacenza. He at once proclaimed that his Ghibellinism was the motive of the prosecution, and aroused the factions of the city to a tumult, under cover of which he escaped.[302]