The Pope gave ear to these plaints, convinced himself of their truth, and made his protest to Ferdinand and Isabella. He announced in his brief that he would have deprived the inquisitors of their office but that he was restrained by consideration for the Sovereigns who had appointed them; nevertheless, he was sending them a brief of admonition, and should they again give cause for complaint he would be constrained to depose them. In the meantime he revoked the faculty given the Sovereigns of appointing inquisitors, protesting that when conceding this he had not sufficiently considered that already there were inquisitors in the Sovereigns’ dominions and that the General of the Dominicans and the Spanish provincials of that order had the right to make such appointments. The bull that he had granted was therefore in opposition to that right, and would never have been granted had the matter been sufficiently considered.[76] CHAPTER IX THE SUPREME COUNCIL The Sovereigns appear to have submitted without protest to this papal interference and to the revocation of the faculty bestowed upon them of nominating the inquisitors in their kingdom. This submission was hardly to have been expected from their earlier attitude, but there are two reasons, either or both of which may possibly account for it. It will be remembered that there was a considerable number of New-Christians about the Court and in immediate attendance upon the Queen, one of whom was her secretary Pulgar. What view Pulgar took of the Seville proceedings we know, and it is not too much to assume that his view was the view of all Christians of Jewish extraction. These New-Christians and others may very well have urged upon the notice of the Sovereigns the cruelties and injustices that were being practised, drawing their attention to the decree that made innocent children suffer for the offences of which their parents had been convicted--a decree which, hideous enough when the parents were actually guilty, became unspeakably hideous when that guilt was no more than presumed. In view of such representations the Sovereigns may have found the papal rebuke unanswerable and the Pope’s action justified. Then, again, they may have taken into consideration the projected war upon Granada, the last province of the peninsula remaining in Moorish hands. Funds were urgently required for this campaign, and the confiscations that were daily being effected by the Holy Office were rapidly supplying these--for the early victims of the Inquisition, as we know, were persons of great wealth and distinction.[77]