We enter now on the eighteenth century, and are, as it were, in sight of the history of our own times. The position in which we find the Jews is in the main the same which they at present occupy. In Romish countries they were still liable to sharp persecution, sometimes from mob violence, sometimes from the action of the Church. The lands in which the severest measures were enforced continued to be Spain and Portugal, where the Inquisition was dominant throughout the entire century, though its power gradually but very evidently diminished as the years passed on. In the reign of Philip V., who succeeded to the Spanish throne A.D. 1700, and held it till 1746, the first direct blow was given to its authority. In the War of Succession, which began at the outset of his reign, his French allies treated the Inquisition with very scant respect. They broke open the prisons of the Holy Office, released the prisoners, and even seized the silver images in the Dominican chapels, melting them down to pay the expenses of the campaign. The king took no part in the spoliation; but when the Inquisitors appealed to him against the sacrilegious violence of the French, he replied that he could not interfere with the measures taken by his allies. He was a weak and sombre-tempered young man, though not, it would seem, a religious bigot, and allowed the clergy in the main to have their way. One _Auto da Fé_ was held every year throughout his reign; and the number of victims is said to have amounted to 14,000. There can be little doubt that the greater part of these were ‘secret Jews.’ It is beyond dispute that throughout this century, and long afterwards—even, it is said, to our own times—secret Judaism continued to maintain its hold; and from time to time discoveries were made, and executions followed. In 1713 the English were confirmed in the possession of Gibraltar, which had been wrested from Spain some ten years before. But it is a singular fact that the Spaniards, even when yielding up their stronghold to Great Britain, could not endure that the Jews should be allowed to live in peace there; and one clause of the treaty stipulated that ‘no Jew should be tolerated in that city.’[199]