When Charles had returned to Spain and again held the Córtes at Valladolid, in 1523, they repeated the petitions of 1518 and 1520, adding that nothing had been done. They further suggested that inquisitors should be paid salaries by the king and not draw their pay from the proceeds of their functions, and that false witnesses should be punished in accordance with the Laws of Toro. This shows that the old abuses were felt as acutely as ever, but Charles merely replied that he had asked the pope to commission as inquisitor-general the Archbishop of Seville, Manrique, whom he had especially charged to see that justice was properly administered. Again, in 1525, the Córtes of Toledo complained of the excesses of the inquisitors and the disorders committed by the familiars and asked that the secular judges might be empowered to restrain abuses, but they obtained only a vague promise that, if abuses existed, he would have them corrected.[602] It required no little courage for deputies to arraign the Inquisition publicly in the Córtes, and it is not surprising that the hardihood to do so disappeared with the recognition of the fruitlessness of remonstrance.
Thus all efforts proved futile to mitigate or ameliorate inquisitorial methods, and the Holy Office, in its existing form, was firmly established in Castile for three centuries momentous to the Spanish people.
When Ferdinand, in 1512, made the easy conquest of Navarre he presumably no longer had hope of issue by his Queen Germaine, to whom he could leave the kingdoms of his crown of Aragon. To avoid, therefore, for the new territory the limitations on sovereignty imposed by the Aragonese fueros, in the Córtes of Burgos, in 1515, he caused Navarre to be incorporated with the crown of Castile.[603] Its Inquisition thus finally became Castilian, although at first it was scarce more than a branch of that of Saragossa.
When the Castilian invaders under the Duke of Alva occupied Pampeluna they found there the Dominican friar, Antonio de Maya, armed with a commission as inquisitor, issued by his provincial and confirmed by the pope. The office had doubtless been a sinecure under the House of Albret, but the transfer of the land to the Catholic king gave promise of its future usefulness, for the little kingdom had served as an asylum for refugees from the rest of Spain. The good fraile lost no time in obtaining from Alva permission to exercise his office and in despatching an envoy to Ferdinand at Logroño to secure the royal confirmation and suggest the necessity of appointing a staff of salaried officials. Besides, the episcopal vicar-general of Pampeluna was seeking to exercise the office, and the king was asked to order him not to interfere. Ferdinand, with his usual caution, wrote on September 30, 1512, to the Duke of Alva, as captain-general, and to the Bishop of Majorca as governor, expressing his earnest desire to forward the good work and desiring information as to the character of Maya; meanwhile, if the inquisitors of Saragossa sent to claim fugitives, they were to be promptly surrendered.