[177] A royal decree of Jan. 22, 1784, by Carlos III, declared the ex-Jesuits competent to acquire and hold property; and, in the case of those secular coadjutors who had married, to bequeath their property to their heirs. That monarch died in 1788; and was succeeded by his eldest son, as Carlos IV. In Oct. 1797, the government learned that the Spanish ex-Jesuits were determined to return to Spain, on account of the persecutions and even death which menaced them in the Genoese territories, owing to a change in the government there, and that some of them had already reached the Spanish ports; it therefore decided that they should be allowed to remain in the country, but must live in certain abandoned convents. The Jesuits objected to this, and finally the government permitted them (1798) to retire freely to the homes of their families or into any convents they might choose, save that they were not allowed to reside in Madrid or other royal seats. "Many ex-Jesuits returned to their fatherland, and others decided to remain in Italia; but this situation did not last long, for in the year 1801 another decree was issued condemning them anew to proscription." Orders were given that within one week all Jesuits should leave their homes and present themselves at Alicante or Barcelona, where new orders would be given them. Some fathers advanced in years were allowed to remain in Spain; but all the rest were for the second time shipped to Italy, where they suffered great hardship. In 1808 the Spanish government felt more leniently toward these unfortunate exiles, considering, moreover, the difficulty of furnishing their pensions, and the fact that all those moneys were thus taken out of Spain to foreign countries, to find their way ultimately into the hands of her enemies; and a royal decree by Fernando VII, dated Nov. 15, 1808, granted permission to those Jesuits who desired to return to Spain, with the same pension which they had been receiving. After the war between Spain and France was ended, urgent requests were made to Fernando VII by various personages prominent in ecclesiastical, educational, and municipal affairs that he would reëstablish in his dominions the Society of Jesus; and permission was given by a royal decree dated May 9, 1815, for the Jesuits to have houses in the towns and cities which had asked for them. A year later, after various preparations for this change had been made by the government, another decree extended the reëstablishment to all the towns where the Jesuits had formerly had their institutions. "In virtue of this, all the Spanish Jesuits who were residing in Italy returned to España, at the expense of the court. All these decisions were adopted in España in fulfilment of the bull of Pius VII dated Aug. 7, 1814, Solicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, by which the Jesuits were reëstablished in all the Catholic countries--that of Clement XIV, which decreed the extinction of the order, being thereby annulled. [177A] Not five