Note 271 — Chapter XII · 1608-1700. OVERGROWING INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY.

This proclamation was the decree by which the bigoted Ferdinand II., with revolting injustice, dispossessed legitimate holders of property which had belonged to religious communities, but which in great part had been allotted more than a hundred years before to those monks and priests who had embraced Protestantism, and which, passing through many hands to the persons then in possession, constituted the most legitimate property.