solute
direction of all charitable establishments, of which they had taken the
command, were so many other favourable supports to that supremacy which
they had assumed and maintained in society.

During the reigns succeeding that of Philip II., the condescendence of
the government, the submission of the people, and the acquisition of
riches by cathedrals, colleges, and parish churches, were greatly
augmented.

The incomes of the archbishops, bishops, and canons, rose to an
incredible amount. The sees of Toledo, Seville, Santiago, and Valencia,
were endowed with much greater revenues than even some of the states in
Germany. Great as have been the efforts to investigate and ascertain
with exactitude the precise returns of these sees, it has not been found
possible to obtain any data worthy to be relied on: and in truth, all
years were not equally productive; for those revenues depended in a great
measure on the abundance or scarcity of the crops. It is, however,
certain that the archbishop of Toledo, in particular, did not receive
less, annually, than 150,000 pounds. Some prebends, particularly those
called archdeaconries, were estimated at 6000 pounds a-year, and these
were sometimes disposed of, by the crown, in favour of a cardinal or
foreign prince.

Besides the clergy employed in the cathedral and parish churches, there
were many in orders without income or benefice of any kind, and who yet
contrived to get a very decent and comfortable living by means of the
influence which they exercised in rich houses, where their presence was
regarded as a blessing from heaven. There was scarcely a family of
consideration and of wealth in any town in Spain that was not under
submission to some individual of the clergy. In this way, and deeply
interested as they were that the people thus prostrate at their feet
should not have their eyes opened, the clergy made war against the
cultivation of the sciences and the propagation of useful knowledge.

The Spanish church, however, produced many and very eminent writings on
those particular sciences which, at that time, formed part of the general
course of their studies. It also sent forth many distinguished poets,
orators, and learned men, but never was disposed to protect or to
cultivate those sciences which give to man a power over nature: thus it
was that mathematics were most shamefully neglected; in physics the
absurd doctrines of the Peripatetics predominated; and the na