1826.] History of the Spanish Inquisition. 475 
cal opinions; but) the inquisitors eluded this order, by pretending, that they 
brought prohibited books into the kingdom, or spoke in favour of heresy. 
Among the sufferers by the penances was another Englishman. 
John Fronton, an Englishman of the city of Bristol, who came to Seyille, 
where he. was informed of the arrest of Nicholas Burton. He was the pro- 
prietor of a considerable part of the merchandize taken from Burton, and 
after proving this fact. by documents which he brought from England, he 
claimed restitution, He was subjected to great delays and expenses, but as it 
was impossible to, deny his rights, the inquisitors promised to. restore the 
merchandize ; in. the mean time they contrived that witnesses should appear 
and depose that-John, Fronton had advanced heretical propositions, and he was 
taken to the secret prisons. The fear of death induced Fronton to say every- 
thing that the inquisitors required, and he demanded reconciliation. He was 
declared tobe violently suspected of the Lutheran heresy. This was sufficient 
to authorize the inquisitors to seize his property, and he was reconciled, con- 
demned to forfeit his merchandize, and to wear the san-benito for the space of 
one year. This is a remarkable proof of the mischief produced by the 
secresy of the inquisitorial proceedings. If the affair of John Fronton had 
been made public, any lawyer would have shewn the nullity and falsehood of 
the instruction, Yet there are Englishmen who defend the tribunal of the 
holy office, as a useful institution, and I have heard an English Catholic priest 
speak in its defence. I represented that he did not understand the nature of 
the tribunal; that I was not less attached to the Catholic religion than he, or 
any inquisitor might be; but that if the spirit of peace and charity, humility 
and disinterestedness, inculcated by the Holy Scriptures, is compared with the 
system of severity, craft, and malice, dictated by the laws of the holy office, 
and the power possessed by the inquisitors (from the secresy of their pro- 
ceedings) of abusing their authority, in defiance of natural and divine laws, the 
orders of the Popes and the royal decrees, it will be impossible not to detest 
the tribunal as only tending to produce hypocrisy. 
To enumerate the unfortunate persons destroyed may be beyond any 
human calculation: their register is before another judgment-seat, in 
which no art. of man can cancel the numbers or palliate the crime. The 
papers of the Inquisition had been irregularly kept in the beginning, 
and many of them have been destroyed in the late commotions of 
Spain. But Llorente, from the best data in his power, calculates the 
general list thus : 
Persons burnt, 31,912. 
Effigies burnt, of which the result was exile, or death if the originals 
returned, 17,659. 
Persons condemned to severe penances, 291,450. 
Making the enormous multitude of three hundred and forty-one 
thousand and twenty-one in Spain alone; where, even so late as 1781, 
there was a burning. 
This calculation leaves out the multitude who perished in the dun- 
geons, through misery, confinement, and actual torture. It also leaves 
out the’ countless thousands slain by the Inquisition in Italy, Germany, 
France, Poland, and the Low Countries. And such is the finished 
work of Rome! 
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