had a halter round his neck, and in
his hand he carried an extinguished torch, while his companions destined
to the stake also carried extinguished torches or crosses. Many
trembled and tottered as they moved along; indeed, no one bore himself
more bravely than the young advocate. After the prisoners came the
local magistrates, the judges, and officers of state, accompanied by a
train of nobility on horseback. Then came the secular and monastic
clergy; and at some distance, as if they were too great and important to
mingle with ordinary people, rode in slow and solemn pomp the members of
the Holy Office, preceded by their fiscal, bearing the standard of the
Inquisition. That accursed bloodstained banner was composed of red silk
damask, on which the names and insignia of Pope Sextus the Fourth, and
Ferdinand the Catholic, the founders of the hellish tribunal, were
conspicuous; and it was surmounted by a crucifix of massive silver
overlaid with gold, which the ignorant populace had been taught to hold
in the highest veneration. These were the persons who were to take the
chief part in the performances of the day; they were followed by their
familiars on horseback, who, with many of the principal gentry of the
country, formed their body-guard.

With a few years' judicious educating by the Jesuits, and a continuance
of supineness and incredulity as to Rome's designs on the part of
British Protestants, of which all denominations are guilty, it is not at
all impossible that similar scenes may be enacted in England.
Ritualistic forms and ceremonies, and public processions, and, still
more, the insidious teaching of numbers professing to be ministers of
religion, are accustoming the people to a system which must end in their
subjugation to sacerdotal despotism.

An immense concourse of people of the lower ranks closed the procession,
vociferating to one another, with open eyes and necks stretched out
eager to catch a sight of the condemned prisoners and the grand
inquisitors as they ascended their respective platforms. The latter
took their places, and then the Queen-Regent and the young prince took
their places in the royal box, or bed of state, as it was called,
surrounded by a number of the chief nobility of the kingdom.

It was six o'clock in the morning, and the sun was already glittering on
the gilded crosses and other devices on the tops of the banners, when,
the company having taken their places, Francisco Baca