and banishing him for ever from all the dominions of his Catholic Majesty. The Grand Inquisitor naturally chose the former, and resigned next morning. Pressure was put on Pope Urban VIII. by the Spanish Ambassador, and very shortly an order arrived from Rome that the whole of the documents and evidence in the case were to be sealed up and sent in a box by a messenger of the Holy Office to his Holiness himself for decision. The messenger chosen was one of the Inquisition notaries called Alfonso Paredes. The Count-Duke, under various pretexts, delayed this man's departure for some weeks, and in the meanwhile had good portraits of him painted and sent by special messengers to all the ports in Italy where he was likely to land, and orders were sent to the Spanish agents to capture him at all risks. On the night of his arrival at Genoa, by the connivance of the authorities, he was seized, gagged, and carried off to Naples, where he was imprisoned for the rest of his life, condemned to perpetual silence on pain of instant death. The box of papers that he bore was sent privately to the King, who, with Olivares, burnt the contents without even opening the packet. The new Grand Inquisitor, who was a creature of the Queen, a Benedictine monk named Diego de Arce, was not to be entirely balked, and although no evidence now existed, he had the prothonotary Don Geronimo Villanueva brought from his prison in Toledo, where he had languished for two years, and placed before the tribunal of the Inquisition. He was stripped of his arms, accoutrements, insignia of rank and outer clothing, and sat upon a plain low wooden stool, and then, without any evidence being given or statement of specific offence, was condemned for irreligion, sacrilege, superstition, and other enormities, and, by the mercy of the Holy Office, was absolved from all this on condition that he fasted every Friday for a year, never again entered the convent, and gave 2,000 ducats to the poor through the monks of Atocha. {343} _THE JOURNAL OF RICHARD BERE._ {345} [Illustration: Headpiece] _THE JOURNAL OF RICHARD BERE._[1]