This case may have been mere jugglery and collusion, but in general it by no means followed that royal decrees sent to the Suprema for transmission were forwarded. If it objected, it would respond by a consulta arguing their impropriety or illegality, and this would, if necessary, be repeated three or four times at long intervals until, perhaps, the matter was forgotten or dropped or some compromise was reached. The privilege that all instructions must be transmitted through the Suprema was therefore one of no little importance and it was insisted upon tenaciously. There was a convenient phrase invented which we shall often meet--_obedecer y no cumplir_--to obey but not to execute, which was very serviceable on these occasions. In 1610 the Suprema argued away a cédula of Philip III as invalid because it had been despatched through the Council of State and the king was repeatedly told to his face that the laws required his cédulas to be countersigned by the Suprema in order to secure their execution. This was done to Philip IV, in 1634, when he intervened in a quarrel and, in 1681 to Carlos II when there were difficulties threatened with foreign nations arising from abuses committed in examining importations in search of forbidden books.[814] As the questions calling for royal interposition as a rule affected only the wide secular and not the spiritual jurisdiction of the Inquisition, this created conditions unendurable in any well-organized government.
Another change which conduced greatly to the independence of the Inquisition was the control which it acquired over its finances. We have seen that, under Ferdinand, the confiscations and pecuniary penances belonged to the crown and that the salaries and expenses were paid by his orders. The finances of the Inquisition will be discussed hereafter and meanwhile it suffices to say that, after his death and the exuberant liberality of Charles to his Flemish favorites during his first residence in Spain, the diminishing receipts from these sources caused them to be virtually assigned to defraying the expenses of the Inquisition and they were no longer regarded as a source of supply to the royal treasury. Still, the money belonged to the crown and the Inquisition enjoyed it only under the authority and by virtue of the bounty of the sovereign.