The irony of events decreed that the very first task to which Philip was to put his hand was to fight with the Holy See. Charles and his predecessors had wrested from one pontiff after another the rights of presentation to all bishoprics, prelacies, and other preferments of the Church in Spain, so that the Spanish clergy depended now upon their sovereign more than upon the pope, and the king practically used the vast revenues of the Church as an instrument of his policy. The royal council, moreover, had the power of supervision over the ecclesiastical courts in Spain, nominally to protect Spanish priests from injustice, but really to make the civil power supreme, and give to the State a predominance over the Church. The Inquisition itself was quite as much a political as an ecclesiastical institution, and was jealously regarded by Philip and his predecessors as under their immediate control, and not that of the pope. Similar, and even greater power, was exercised by the king over the Spanish Church in Naples and Sicily, to the exclusion of papal influence. These facts, together with the encroachments of the Spaniards in Italy, had been suffered with a bad grace by previous pontiffs, but Cardinal Caraffa, Paul IV., was a Neapolitan, and a deadly enemy of the Spanish power, and immediately after his accession began to intrigue with the King of France to join with him for the purpose of expelling the Spaniards from Naples, and curbing their power in Italy generally. The arrogant and intemperate pontiff launched against the emperor and his son invective more bitter even than he did against heretics. “The Spaniards,” he was wont to say, were “the vile and abject spawn of Jews, the dregs of the world,” and “now the time had come when they should be castigated for their sins, be expelled from their states, and Italy should be free.” The aid of the Grand Turk was also invoked, and Henry II., tempted by the bait of conquering Naples by such a coalition, signed the treaty with the pope in December 1555.