Inquisitors, especially of distant tribunals, were not accustomed to pay much heed to instructions inculcating moderation in the exercise of their powers and the Sicilians were indisposed to submission. We learn from a royal letter of December 25, 1510, that the jurats objected to taking the customary oath of obedience to inquisitors and that the local authorities persisted in levying taxes on the officials.[25] Relations were strained and disaffection grew until there was an explosion on St. Bernard’s day, August 20, 1511, when the people rose with demands that the privileges of the officials should be curtailed--a rising which cost, it is said, the lives of a thousand Spanish soldiers.[26] Neither this warning nor Ferdinand’s exhortations abated the pretensions of the Holy Office. A letter of the viceroy, Hugo de Moncada, September 6, 1512, relates that when some troops pursued a band of robbers and arrested them in the country-house of an inquisitor, where they had sought refuge, the latter threatened the captain and his men with excommunication if the prisoners were not released and then claimed jurisdiction to try them, on the ground of the place of their capture.[27] This was by no means an isolated case for soon afterwards two other flagrant examples of similar character evoked from Ferdinand, October 25th, an order to rescind their action, coupled with an expression of extreme displeasure at their thus affording protection to malefactors on one pretext or another. Their behavior in the custom-house to evade the payment of duties was a further subject of animadversion and he warned them sternly to avoid in future creating such scandals.[28]