1826.] History of the Spanish Inquisition. 47} 
tions; but Torquemada being informed of their inclinations, had the boldness 
to appear: before them with'a) crucifix in his hand, and to addréss them in these’ 
words :— ' 
** Judas sold his master for thirty pieces of silver ; your highnesses are about 
he do the same for thirty thousand; behold him, take him, and hasten to sell 
im. : 
The fanaticism of the Dominican wrought a sudden change in the minds of 
the sovereigns ; and they issued a decree on the 31st of March 1492, by which 
all the Jews were compelled to quit Spain before the 31st of July ensuing, on 
pain of death, and the confiscation of their property; the decree also prohibited 
Christians from receiving them into their houses after that period. ‘They’were’ 
permitted to sell ‘their stock, to carry away their furniture’ and other effects, 
except gold and silver, for which they were to accept letters of change, or any 
merchandize not prohibited. j 
. Torquemada commissioned all preachers to exhort them to receive baptism, 
aud remain in the kingdom. A small number suffered themselves to be per- 
suaded; the rest sold their goods at so low a price, that Andrew Bernaldez (a 
contemporary historian) declares, in his history of the Catholic Kings, that he 
saw the Jews give a housé for an ass, and a vineyard for a small quantily of cloth 
or linen. ; ; 
- OF those unfortunate beings, eight hundred thousand were thus 
driven from their country! An act of atrocious tyranny, unexcused by 
any policy whatever. Yet. their expulsion was, in. fact, a mercy. 
To have remained in Spain, must. be to have remained in) perpetual 
exposure to torture and death. 
In 1609, the final expulsion of the Moors occurred. The Inquisitiom 
had persecuted them into violence. A compact was made, and they at 
length emigrated into Africa, to the number of a million of men. , Spain, 
in little more than a century, owed to this tribunal the loss, the irre-~ 
parable loss of three millions of people ! 
- The German Reformation in 1517 had, as is well known, compelled, 
the attention of Charles the Vth in a remarkable degree from his, 
accession to the Spanish throne. His long intercourse with Protestants 
threw a suspicion of heresy even upon their imperial persecutor, and, 
Charles himself, in the plenitude of his power, was forced to explain, 
his orthodoxy to the still mightier tribunal of the Inquisition. It. is not 
less striking, that the nine ecclesiastics; some of them of high rank, 
who had conducted the affairs of the Spanish church at the Council of 
Trent, laboured under a similar suspicion, and were all thrown into the 
dungeons of this mysterious and terrible authority, immediately on the 
emperor's death. It had been said that Charles died a Protestant ; 
this, of course, the whole energy of the popish priesthood was exerted, 
to deny, and Llorente gives the last document purporting to be issued. 
by Charles. Yet, in reading this, we must remember that Charles,, for, 
the latter period of his retirement, had suffered an extraordinary decay, 
of his once powerful understanding ; that he was actually lingering into 
the. grave in a cloister, where one of his occupations had been the 
strange and melancholy one of ordering a procession, which he called 
his own funeral, and in which his coffin was carried in royal pomp; that 
he was surrounded by monks, and was thus liable, in the highest 
degree, either to be urged into weak and superstitious declarations, or 
even to have them forged in his name. The monks were masters of 
himself, his time, his mind, and his papers. after his death. The paper 
which. is thus. insufficiently supposed to. decide the. question of the 
king’s fidelity to Rome, is here given :— 
