The Inquisition thus had overcome the popular horror which its proceedings had excited; it had braved the shock and triumphed over the opposition of the secular authorities, and had planted itself firmly in the soil. After the harvest had been gathered in Toulouse it was evident to the indefatigable activity of the inquisitors that they could best perform their functions by riding circuit and holding assizes in all the towns subject to their jurisdiction, and this was represented as a concession to avert the complaints of those who deemed it a hardship to be summoned to distant places. Their incessant labors began to tell. Heretics were leaving the lands of Raymond at last and seeking a refuge elsewhere. Possibly some of them found it in the domains which had fallen to the crown, for in this year we find Gregory scolding the royal officials for their slackness of zeal in executing sentences against powerful heretics. Elsewhere, however, there was no rest for them. In Provence this year Pons de l’Esparre made himself conspicuous for the energy and effectiveness with which he confounded the enemies of the faith; while Montpellier, alarmed at the influx of heretics and their success in propagating their errors, appealed to Gregory to favor them with some assistance that should effectively resist the rising tide, and Gregory at once ordered his legate Jean de Vienne to go thither and take the necessary measures.[27] The progress of the Inquisition, however, was not destined to be uninterrupted. Count Raymond, apparently reckless of the numerous excommunications under which he lay, so far from sailing for Palestine in March, had seized Marseilles, which was in rebellion against its suzerain, the Count of Provence. This aroused anew the indignation of Gregory, not only because of its interference with the war against the Saracens in Spain and the Holy Land, but because of the immunity which heretics would enjoy during the quarrel of the Christian princes. He peremptorily ordered Raymond to desist from his enterprise on Marseilles, and to perform his Crusader’s vow. An appeal was made to King Louis and Queen Blanche, whose intervention procured for Raymond not only a postponement of the crusade for another year, but an order to the legate empowering him to grant the count’s request to take the Inquisition entirely out of the hands of the Dominicans, if, on investigation, he should find justification for Raymond’s assertion that they were actuated by hatred towards himself. Fresh troubles had arisen at Toulouse. July 24, 1237, the inquisitors had again excommunicated the viguier and consuls, because they had not arrested and burned Alaman de Roaix and some other heretics, condemned _in absentia_, and Raymond was resolved, if possible, to relieve himself and his subjects from the cruel oppression to which they were exposed.[28]