Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and thought with other princes that the Jesuits had subsisted too long, he would probably have acted against them even if they had been innocent of that charge. Having formed an intention of seizing their ample property and banishing their persons, he gave secret orders to the count d? Aranda for the execution of a bold scheme, which, if attempted in the A' D' 1' preceding century, might have shaken the foundations of his throne. At night, six houses of Jesuits in Madrid were surrounded by military detachments; and the unfortunate occupants, roused from sleep, were commanded to prepare for a journey to the coast. They quietly submitted to the mandate, and were escorted to Charthagena; and, in other towns, similar violence was exercised. Then appeared " the pragmatic sanction of his majesty, for the banishment of the regulars . .. . of the company from Spain and the Indies, and the P confiscation of their temporalities." Pensions for life were promised to all, except such members as were not Spaniards by birth. Many were conveyed to Corsica; and others found refuge in the pope's dominions. As soon as the royal will was known in the provinces of Mexico and Peru, the Jesuits were seized without tumult; and in Paraguay, where they had long maintained an almost independent empire, by the extraordinary influence which they had acquired over the natives, they were suddenly deprived of all power, and shipped off for Europe. By the influence of his catholic majesty, the Jesuits were, in the course of the same year, expelled from the two Sicilies, and sent into the papal territories. His holiness warmly remonstrated against the conduct of the Neapolitan government: but no more regard was paid to his memorial in this case, than to a brief which he soon after issued against Ferdinand duke ...