llowing: _Mercenarios_, or Friars of Mercy (_de la Merced_), founded
with the exclusive object of ransoming Christian captives who groaned in
the dungeons of the Barbary States; the _Carmelites_,--_calzados_,
wearing shoes and stockings, and _descalzos_, without either; the
_Augustines_, _calzados_ and _descalzos_; the _Preachers_, or
_Dominicans_; the Friars of _St John of God_, whose duty was to serve
sick persons in the hospitals attached to their convents; and above all
the large family of _St Francis_, divided into four great ramifications,
viz., the _Franciscan_ properly speaking; the _Fathers of Observance_;
the _Fathers of St Diego_; and the _Capuchins_. All these orders had
convents in the principal towns of the Peninsula, and its colonies. In
some cities,--as, for example, Madrid, Seville, and Toledo,--there were
as many as twenty or thirty of these establishments, many of which
contained from one hundred to one hundred and fifty inmates; but the
average may be stated, with reason, at thirty for each convent. The
_calzados_ orders were at liberty to hold property; but the _descalzos_,
in whose number are to be reckoned all the family of Franciscans, were
strictly forbidden to do so; and hence they lived, exclusively, on the
alms of the faithful.

These alms were of various kinds. Those called pious works (_obras
pias_), consisted of certain rents, or pensions, granted to a convent on
condition that certain masses should be said therein, during the year,
for the soul of the grantor. Rich men who had acquired a fortune by
unfair means, or through an extortionate usury, were induced to expect
forgiveness of their sins, if they left large sums of money to the
fathers of the convent the saint of which they were accustomed to worship
or venerate, and to whom they usually paid their devotions. Some of
those benefactors, most generously, defrayed the expenses of a religious
festival, from which resulted a considerable profit to the convent in
which that festival was celebrated. Others repaired conventual edifices
at their own expense, or enlarged them by making extensive wings or other
additions, in which there was always a profuse display of marble, bronze,
and other precious materials. But the principal source of the revenue of
the mendicant orders was that called the _questacion_. {57} Every
morning each convent poured out from its gates a certain number of lay
brothers (_legos_), each being furnished with