Sixtus V was uniformly severe in the repression of all kinds of crime. He was, no doubt, by nature cruel; he spared no one and punished wrong doing inexorably. A man of austere virtue, he condemned all immorality and would suffer no breaches of the law. His rule was harsh and unrelenting, but it extricated Rome from the old chaos of tumult and disorder. A long list might be made of the summary regulations he enforced for the good government of the city. He issued stringent laws against astrologers, fortune tellers, card sharpers and blasphemers; he obliged all ecclesiastics to appear with the tonsure and in the dress of their order; he threatened death to the newsmongers if they spread any report that ought to remain secret or might be prejudicial to the honour of private persons. In this connection it may be said that capital punishment was comparatively rare and reserved mostly for homicides after fair trial. Impunity for misconduct was no longer conceded to birth, position, connections or benefit of clergy. It was dangerous to make a joke of the law. Several youthful members of the best families, Orsini Sforza and Incoronati, dared to place cats’ heads on pikes on the bridge of St. Angelo to ridicule some public execution, and they were all forthwith arrested, but escaped with a reprimand. The son of a cardinal, D’Altemps, was guilty of abduction, and despite the protests of his father, was seized and shut up in the castle of St. Angelo. Here he lay for four months under sentence of death, the proper penalty for his offence; and although the sacred college resented the action, the pope long refused to forgive the offender, who was only released to oblige his uncle, a German of high rank, who came to Rome on purpose to plead his cause. Two servants of another cardinal, Sforza, quarrelled and blood was shed, but the offenders made their escape. Sixtus ordered the cardinal to give them up under pain of being locked up himself in St. Angelo. Another cardinal was arrested for disobeying the pope’s orders, and when Cardinal de Medicis pleaded for him, Sixtus sharply reproved him, declaring that he meant to be master both in Rome and in Christendom. The pope’s arrogant demeanour naturally did not endear him to the cardinals and several of them would have no intercourse with the Vatican and attended neither the consistories nor the ceremonies of the Church.