Growing dissatisfaction prevailed, and in 1696, the king, Charles II, summoned a conference or Grand Junta to enquire into the complaints that poured in from all quarters against the Inquisition. It was composed of two councillors of state from Castile, Aragon, the Indies, and the Spanish provinces in Italy, with two members of the religious orders. It reported that the Holy Office exercised illegal powers, still arrogated the right to throw persons of rank into prison and cover their families with disgrace. It punished with merciless severity the slightest opposition or disrespect shown to dependents or familiars who had come to enjoy extensive and exorbitant privileges. They claimed secular jurisdiction in matters nowise appertaining to religion, and set aside restrictions contained in their own canon law. The Junta strongly recommended that these restrictions should be rigidly enforced, and that no one should be thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition, save on charges of an heretical nature. It urged the right of appeal to the throne, and the removal of all causes to the royal courts for trial. It detailed the privileges granted to the servants of the Holy Office. Even a coachman or a lackey demanded reverence and might conduct himself with unbounded insolence. If a servant girl were not treated obsequiously in a shop she might complain and the offender was liable to be cast into the dungeons of the Inquisition. So great was the discontent, so many tumults arose, that the Junta would have all such unrighteous privileges curtailed, and would authorise the civil courts to keep the encroachments of the Holy Office in check. With the eighteenth century the authority of the Holy Office visibly waned. Philip V, a French prince, and a grandson of Louis XIV, whose succession produced the long protracted war of the Spanish Succession, declined to be honoured with an _auto da fé_ at his coronation, but he maintained the Inquisition as an instrument of despotic government, and actually used it to punish as heretics those who had any doubt concerning his title to the crown. Yet he rather used the Inquisition than supported it; for he deprived of his office an inquisitor-general who had presumed to proceed for heresy against a high officer. The Cortes of Castile again, (1714), recorded their condemnation, but without any further benefit than that which must eventually result from the disclosure of a truth. The same body reiterated their disapproval a few years afterwards, (1720). But while Philip V used the Inquisition for his own service, and the heretical doctrine which had prevailed two centuries before no longer left a trace behind, there were multitudes of persons accused of attempting to revive Judaism and others gave offence by their efforts to promote Freemasonry. This gave the inquisitors abundant pretext for the discharge of their political mission.