They reproached the municipal authorities with lending themselves as instruments to the institution.  They asked magistrates and sheriffs how far they would go in their defence before God’s tribunal for the slaughter of his creatures, if they could only answer the divine arraignment by appealing to the edict of 1550.  On the other hand, the inquisitors were clamorous in abuse of the languor and the cowardice of the secular authorities.  They wearied the ear of the Duchess with complaints of the difficulties which they encountered in the execution of their functions—­of the slight alacrity on the part of the various officials to assist them in the discharge of their duties.  Notwithstanding the express command of his Majesty to that effect, they experienced, they said, a constant deficiency of that cheerful co-operation which they had the right to claim, and there was perpetual discord in consequence.  They had been empowered by papal and by royal decree to make use of the gaols, the constables, the whole penal machinery of each province; yet the officers often refused to act, and had even dared to close the prisons.  Nevertheless, it had been intended, as fully appeared by the imperial and royal instructions to the inquisitors, that their action through the medium of the provincial authorities should be unrestrained.  Not satisfied with these representations to the Regent, the inquisitors had also made a direct appeal to the King.  Judocus Tiletanus and Michael de Bay addressed to Philip a letter from Louvain.  They represented to him that they were the only two left of the five inquisitors-general appointed by the Pope for all the Netherlands, the other three having been recently converted into bishops.  Daily complaints, they said, were reaching them of the prodigious advance of heresy, but their own office was becoming so odious, so calumniated, and exposed to so much resistance, that they could not perform its duties without personal danger.  They urgently demanded from his Majesty, therefore, additional support and assistance.  Thus the Duchess, exposed at once to the rising wrath of a whole people and to the shrill blasts of inquisitorial anger, was tossed to and fro, as upon a stormy sea.  The commands of the King, too explicit to be tampered with, were obeyed.  The theological assembly had met and given advice.  The Council of Trent was here and there enforced.  The edicts were republished and the inquisitors encouraged.  Moreover, in accordance with Philip’s suggestion, orders were now given that the heretics should be executed at midnight in their dungeons, by binding their heads between their knees, and then slowly suffocating them in tubs of water.  Secret drowning was substituted for public burning, in order that the heretic’s crown of vainglory, which was thought to console him in his agony, might never be placed upon his head.