An infant of four years, Charles II., inherited the throne, and this gave the Jesuits an opportunity under the Regency of Maria Anna, daughter of Ferdinand III. Queen Anna had brought with her from her German home a very learned Jesuit, Father Nidhard, who was her confessor. It was quite natural that this father should attain predominant power at the death of the King, and we may regard it as a piece of particularly frivolous Castilian gossip that the sixty-year-old priest had a more tender relation to the Queen than that of political adviser. We may further grant that Nidhard's power was used unselfishly, and he was true to the ascetic ideal of his Society. But he was flagrantly false to other and more important rules of the Society in occupying the position he did, and he added a heavy contribution to the accumulating hatred of the Society. He was not only royal confessor, but a Councillor of State--in fact, the first minister--and Grand Inquisitor. He had pleaded his rule when the Queen pressed these dignities on him. She obtained a "dispensation" from the Pope, and Nidhard then posed as a Jesuit Ximenes and ruled Spain. The papal document gives him no moral justification. Had he and his superiors willed, he could at once have been transferred to Germany. They acquiesced in his political position on account of the power it gave them.
The Spanish nobles chafed under the rule of a priest and a woman and were irritated to see the decay of the nation continue. In 1668 they lost much of the Low Countries in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the independence of Portugal was recognised. Don Juan, a natural son of the late King, seized the opportunity and attacked the Jesuits. They appointed the prince governor of the Low Countries, and he refused to go. They forbade him to approach the capital, and he boldly advanced to Madrid and demanded the dismissal of Nidhard. The troops and people supported him, and, shedding bitter tears, the Queen was obliged to "permit Nidhard to retire from office." The crowd threatened to end his career at once, but he escaped to Rome, where he became Spanish ambassador, and afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Edessa. He had greatly strengthened the hostility to the Jesuits in Spain.