Previously to the accession of Charles V., it can not be said that an inquisition had ever been established in the provinces.  Isolated instances to the contrary, adduced by the canonists who gave their advice to Margaret of Parma, rather proved the absence than the existence of the system.  In the reign of Philip the Good, the vicar of the inquisitor-general gave sentence against some heretics, who were burned in Lille (1448).  In 1459, Pierre Troussart, a Jacobin monk, condemned many Waldenses, together with some leading citizens of Artois, accused of sorcery and heresy.  He did this, however, as inquisitor for the Bishop of Arras, so that it was an act of episcopal, and not papal inquisition.  In general, when inquisitors were wanted in the provinces, it was necessary to borrow them from France or Germany.  The exigencies of persecution making a domestic staff desirable, Charles the Fifth, in the year 1522, applied to his ancient tutor, whom he had placed on the papal throne.

Charles had, however, already, in the previous year appointed Francis Van der Hulst to be inquisitor-general for the Netherlands.  This man, whom Erasmus called a “wonderful enemy to learning,” was also provided with a coadjutor, Nicholas of Egmond by name, a Carmelite monk, who was characterized by the same authority as “a madman armed with a sword.”  The inquisitor-general received full powers to cite, arrest, imprison, torture heretics without observing the ordinary forms of law, and to cause his sentences to be executed without appeal.  He was, however, in pronouncing definite judgments, to take the advice of Laurens, president of the grand council of Mechlin, a coarse, cruel and ignorant man, who “hated learning with a more than deadly hatred,” and who might certainly be relied upon to sustain the severest judgments which the inquisitor might fulminate.  Adrian; accordingly, commissioned Van der Hulst to be universal and general inquisitor for all the Netherlands.  At the same time it was expressly stated that his functions were not to supersede those exercised by the bishops as inquisitors in their own sees.  Thus the papal inquisition was established in the provinces.  Van der Hulst, a person of infamous character, was not the man to render the institution less odious than it was by its nature.  Before he had fulfilled his duties two years, however, he was degraded from his office by the Emperor for having forged a document.  In 1525, Buedens, Houseau and Coppin were confirmed by Clement the Seventh as inquisitors in the room of Van der Hulst.  In 1531, Ruard Tapper and Michael Drutius were appointed by Paul the Third, on the decease of Coppin, the other two remaining in office.  The powers of the papal inquisitors had been gradually extended, and they were, by 1545, not only entirely independent of the episcopal inquisition, but had acquired right of jurisdiction over bishops and archbishops, whom they were empowered to arrest and imprison.