This terrible tribunal, which had been established in its final form by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, and freed from appeal to Rome in 1497, consisted of a Supreme Council formed of lawyers and theologians, mostly Dominicans, an order to which Philip showed especial favour. At the head of this Council stood the Grand Inquisitor, appointed by the king himself, with numerous subordinate tribunals, protected by armed ‘familiars.’ Their trials were conducted in secret. Persons were tempted or forced by threats to denounce their enemies, their friends, and even their relatives; a system of espionage was resorted to; torture was freely used to extort confessions from the accused; and the most harmless words were often twisted into heterodoxy by the subtle refinements of the Dominican theologians. They punished by forfeiture of goods, by penance, by imprisonment, and in the last resort handed over the condemned to the secular arm, to be burnt at an _Auto da fè_. Supported by this unwonted harmony between Pope and King, the Grand Inquisitor, Don Fernando Valdès, Archbishop of Seville, set vigorously to work. In Seville alone, 800 were arrested on the first day, and on May 21, 1559, the first of the _Autos da fè_ took place in the streets of Valladolid; another was solemnised on the arrival of Philip in Spain, and a third amid the _fêtes_ attending his marriage with his third wife, Elizabeth of France, in 1560. Indeed, no great ceremonial was for some years considered complete unless sanctified by an _Auto da fè_, and the Spaniards preferred one to a bull-fight. It may be true that the cruelties of the Inquisition have been exaggerated; yet, at least, opinions, which in other countries would have been tolerated, were ruthlessly suppressed. Not only was all scientific speculation tabooed, and Spanish scholars forbidden to visit other countries, but the slightest deviation from the strictest orthodoxy was severely visited. The Inquisition was even used against the Church. Although the number of the clergy and the monks was very large, and their wealth, especially in Castile, enormous, no Church in Europe was more completely under royal control. The nomination to ecclesiastical offices was exclusively in the hands of the king; papal interference, unless by his leave, was stoutly resisted; and, if the Church was rich, at least one-third of its revenues fell into the royal coffers. The power of the crown was also enhanced by the devotion of the Jesuits to the royal cause. It was, however, on the Dominicans that Philip mostly relied. The ignorance and bigotry of the members of this order of friars in Spain is only equalled by their subservience to the royal will. They dominated the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and subjected to its discipline not only Theresa, one of the most devoted of Spanish saints, but the members of the powerful Society of Jesus, and even the episcopal bench itself. No less than nine bishops