The inquisitors then delivered them into his hands, with an ironical request that he would deal with them tenderly, and without blood-letting or injury.

Those who remained steadfast to the last were then burned at the stake; they who in the last extremity renounced their faith were strangled before being thrown into the flames.
Such was the Spanish inquisition--technically--so called: It was, according' to the biographer of Philip the Second, a "heavenly remedy, a guardian angel of Paradise, a lions' den in which Daniel and other just men could sustain no injury, but in which perverse sinners were torn to pieces." It was a tribunal superior to all human law, without appeal, and certainly owing no allegiance to the powers of earth or heaven.

No rank, high or humble, was safe from its jurisdiction.

The royal family were not sacred, nor, the pauper's hovel.

Even death afforded no protection.