Undeterred by the fate of Bishop Vera, his successor Fernando de Figueroa, about 1590, had a lively struggle with the tribunal. He excommunicated Doctor Alonso Pacheco, regidor of the Grand Canary and deputy governor of Tenerife, because he would not abandon illicit relations with a married woman. The tribunal intervened and evoked the case, giving rise to a prolonged competencia, which remained undecided in consequence of the death of the culprit.[356] Causes of such strife were never lacking and the first half of the seventeenth century was largely occupied by them and by an endless struggle to compel the chapter to allow to the inquisitors cushioned chairs in the cathedral.[357] On one occasion, in 1619, the chapter offended the tribunal by obeying a royal cédula and disregarding a threat which enjoined disobedience. The canons were thereupon excommunicated and appealed to the king, who found himself obliged to withdraw the cédula.[358] The overbearing conduct of the tribunal produced a chronic feeling of exasperation and the veriest trifle was sufficient to cause an outbreak. One custom provocative of much bad blood was that of selecting in Lent a fishing-boat and ordering it to bring its catch to the Inquisition, when, after supplying the officials and prisoners, if there was anything left it might be sold to the people. In 1629 the municipality fruitlessly complained of this to the visitor Juan de Escobar, and in 1631 there was an explosion. The Audiencia rudely intervened by throwing in prison Bartolomé Alonso, the luckless master of a boat selected, and threatening to scourge him through the streets. He managed to convey word to the tribunal, which at once sent its secretary Aguilera to the Audiencia, with a message asking the release of Alonso, but the Audiencia refused to receive anything but a written communication and Aguilera came back with a mandate requiring obedience under pain of two hundred ducats, but he was received with insults and Alonso was publicly sentenced to a hundred lashes. Then the tribunal declared the judges excommunicate, displayed their names as such in the churches and had the bells rung. The Audiencia disregarded the censures and arrested Aguilera, while the Alcaide Salazar, who had accompanied him, hid himself, but the Audiencia ordered a female slave of his to be seized and his house to be torn down, in response to which the tribunal published heavier censures and fines, demanding the release of the prisoners. Then Bishop Murga intervened and asked the tribunal to accept an honorable compromise, but it refused; he returned to the charge, urging the affliction of the people, who dreaded an interdict at a time when there was so much need of rain and when Holy Week was approaching; if reference were made to the Suprema there would be a delay of six months and meanwhile the prisoners under trial by the Audiencia would languish in gaol, for the judges would be incapacitated by the excommunication.