“Don Diego de Simancas, then secretary of the holy office, says, ‘The _auto_ of those heretics was most solemnly celebrated in the Great Square, upon a stage _made upon a new plan, so contrived, that from all parts the culprits might be seen_. Upon other stages were assembled the council and principal persons; and so great was the concourse of people, who came from all the country round, that it was believed the number of persons assembled, including those of the city, could not be less than 200,000! In this fashion the _most pious_ king, the clergy, the nobility, and the people, with tumultuous haste, had recourse to a method of amusement worthy of cannibals, or the ancient Mexicans.’” In the month of October, 1560, _twenty-eight_ persons, many of them members of the noblest families in Spain, were tied to the stakes and publicly burnt, as Lutheran heretics, in the presence of the king at Valladolid. Philip was not satisfied, however, with the sacrifice of his citizens; he extended the Inquisition to the navy, appointing an inquisitor to his fleet in the year 1571; so that, among the seamen of Spain, many were sacrificed in a public _act of faith_, in the city of Messina. He established this court at Lima, in 1571, and in Mexico; and in the year 1574, a public _act of faith_ was held in the market-place of that city. In this, there were _eighty_ penitents; two of them, an Englishman and a Frenchman, were released; some others, for judaising and sorcery, were reconciled; but many of them were burnt to death, in the presence of the viceroy, the senate, the priests, and a large concourse of the Mexicans. Philip II. died in September, 1598, after having reigned _forty-two_ years. His name was abhorred in his own dominions on account of his sanguinary bigotry, and his pernicious policy in government. Historians represent him as worthy to be classed with those monsters of cruelty, Nero and Domitian, deserving the execration of mankind. The number of the victims of the Inquisition during the reign of Philip II. was estimated at not less than 40,664; of whom, 6,300 were burnt; 3,124 were burnt in effigy; and 31,240 were subjected to various humiliating penances. This was, therefore, the reign of terror in Spain.