Charles, although a firm supporter of the authority of the Church of Rome, had done his best, by the publication of that "Interim" mentioned in the last chapter, and by a merciful treatment of the defeated Protestants, to bring the two parties together again. He failed; but he had made the effort. The character of Philip did not dispose him to follow his father in any attempts at peace-making. He was ardently jealous for the ecclesiastical authority of Rome and appears to have had much of the tyrant's spirit: he was very impatient of opposition, and showed no favour to any who differed from him in opinion. Heresy was, in his view, a sin against the Church, which it was his duty to put down by the most effective means in his power, wherever he might find it among his subjects. Wherever it was even so much as suspected, the strictest search should be made for its unmasking. {56} And to him, being in this mood, there was a machine ready to his hand--an institution of the Church known as the Inquisition. Inquisition means inquiry; and the particular object for which the Inquisition was instituted was to inquire into alleged instances of heresy--that is to say, of doctrines and practices of which the Church did not approve--and also into instances of the practice of magic and sorcery, which were deemed to be miracles performed by men with the aid of the devil. The first institution of "Inquisitors," or officials appointed for such inquiry, dated back to the early centuries of the Church's existence, and in those early centuries the punishment which the Inquisitors were allowed to impose on persons convicted of heresy were very mild in comparison with later penalties. They were not allowed to inflict death, nor to use torture in order to extract confession. In the time of Philip II., the Inquisition in Spain, under the name of the Holy Office, became largely independent of the Church of Rome. It actually brought before its Courts bishops of the Church. And it shrank from no cruelty of torture inflicted on suspected persons, in order to make them confess: it even tortured witnesses, to extract from them the testimony, true or false, which the Inquisitors desired. Convicted persons were publicly burnt. There was no appeal from its decisions. An accused person had scarcely a chance of escaping conviction. And the religious zeal of the Inquisitors was quickened by the circumstance that the estates of the convicted were confiscated and distributed to the Church, or partly to the Church and partly to the Crown. [Sidenote: Netherlands in revolt]