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The officers of the exchequer were directed by those acts of Parliament to hold inquisitions for the purpose of obtaining returns of such deeds of conveyance, in order to enrich the king's treasury by confiscations and forfeitures; and the statute-rolls, preserved to this day in Dublin and London, show that such prosecutions often took place, with the invariable result of forfeiture.
There has been a good deal of somewhat superfluous discussion concerning the different kinds of inquisition. The distinction drawn between the papal, the episcopal, and the Spanish inquisitions, did not, in the sixteenth century, convince many unsophisticated minds of the merits of the establishment in any of its shapes.
Garrison said: "Indeed?" He advanced to a chair and sat down. "In the first place, perhaps you will tell us your actual name," said old Robinson, himself taking a seat. Garrison was annoyed. "Let me assure you, once for all, that I do not in the least recognize your right to meddle in my concerns, or subject me to any inquisitions."
The probability is, that coming much into contact with Christians through his persecution of them, and submitting them to the severest questioning, he found that they were in all respects sober plainspoken men, that their conviction was intense, their story coherent, and the doctrines which they had received simple and ennobling; that these results of many inquisitions were so unvarying that he found conviction stealing gradually upon him against his will; common honesty compelled him to inquire further; the answers pointed invariably in one direction only; until at length he found himself utterly unable to resist the weight of evidence which he had collected, and resolved, perhaps at the last suddenly, to yield himself a convert to Christianity.
The Spanish inquisition, strictly so called, that is to say, the modern or later institution established by Pope Alexander the Sixth and Ferdinand the Catholic, was doubtless invested with a more complete apparatus for inflicting human misery, and for appalling human imagination, than any of the other less artfully arranged inquisitions, whether papal or episcopal.
A very useful compilation, recently undertaken under the direction of the deputy-keeper, is Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284-1431, of which three volumes, dealing in alphabetical order with the shires from Bedford to Norfolk, are published Cheshire and Durham are entirely omitted and Lancashire very scantily dealt with as exceptional jurisdictions.
The debates were long and sharp; and it soon became evident that the work was interminable. The summer glided away: the autumn was approaching: the session could not last much longer; and of the twelve distinct inquisitions, which the Commons had resolved to institute, only three had been brought to a close. It was necessary to let the bill drop for that year,
Let me remind you of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars and crusades, of Socrates' cup of poison, of Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames. And is all this to-day something belonging to the past?
There you have club-law, feudalism, and fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train shocking uncertainty and darkness of mind, a corresponding intolerance, discord of faiths, religious wars, crusades, persecution of heretics and inquisitions; as the form of fellowship, chivalry, an amalgam of savagery and foolishness, with its pedantic system of absurd affectations, its degrading superstitions, and apish veneration for women; the survival of which is gallantry, deservedly requited by the arrogance of women; it affords to all Asiatics continual material for laughter, in which the Greeks would have joined.
The unhappy kingdom of Bohemia was abandoned to inquisitions and executions; all liberties were suppressed, the nobles were decimated, ministers and teachers were burned or beheaded, and Protestants of every rank, age, and condition were prohibited from acting as guardians to children, or making wills, or contracting marriages with Catholics, or holding any office of trust and emolument.
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