Never was promise more faithfully kept. Within the Chamber it soon became a parliamentary custom to refute by main force. Sometimes Liberal Deputies volunteered for this service; sometimes it was performed by the Captain of the Premier's Cretan Guard, who of course had no seat in the House, but who held a revolver in his hand.
Out of Parliament the iron hand made itself felt through the length and breadth of the country.
With a view to "purging and uplifting the judiciary body" and "securing Justice from political interference," [3] all the courts were swept clean of Royalist magistrates, whose places were filled with members of the Liberal Party. In this way the pernicious connexion between the judicial and political powers, abolished in 1909--perhaps the most beneficial achievement of the Reconstruction era--was re-established, and Venizelism became an indispensable qualification for going to law with any chance of obtaining justice.
An equally violent passion for purity led at the same time, and by a process as unconstitutional as it was uncanonical, to ecclesiastical reforms, whereby the Holy Synod was deposed and an extraordinary disciplinary court was erected to deal with the clerical enemies of the new regime, especially with the prelates who took part in the anathematization of M. Venizelos. Only five bishops were found in Old Greece competent or compliant enough to sit on this tribunal; the other seven came from Macedonia, Crete, and Mytilene, though those dioceses were under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose sanction was neither asked nor given. With the exception of six, five of whom belonged to the disciplinary court, all the prelates of the Kingdom were struck by it: some were degraded and turned out to subsist as they might, on charity or by the sale of their holy vestments; others were sentenced to humiliating punishments; and { 209} where no plausible excuse for a trial could be discovered, exile or confinement was inflicted arbitrarily. On the other hand, as many as repented received plenary absolution. For instance, the Bishops of Demetrias and Gytheion were deprived for having cursed M. Venizelos; but on promising in future to preach the gospel according to him, they were not only pardoned, but nominated members of the second disciplinary court created to continue the purification of the Church. Even more instructive was the case of the Metropolitan of Castoria who was tried, convicted, and confined in a monastery, but after recanting his political heresies was retried, unanimously acquitted, and reinstated. All this, in the words of the Speech from the Throne, "to restore the prestige of the Church."