The new policies did not immediately catch the attention of the populace, as more pressing issues fanned the flames of popular discontent; namely, the rising prices in bread, oil, coal, and cured meat, caused in part by Esquilache's liberalization of the grain trade.

The writer and government official Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes and the Council of Castile warned him that the confiscation or enforced trimming of customary hats and cloaks would cause resentment amongst the people.

"[1] On Palm Sunday, around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, two townsmen, dressed in the forbidden long capes and chambergos, provocatively crossed the Plazuela de Antón Martín.

They encountered Luis Antonio Fernández de Córdoba y Spínola, the 11th Duke of Medinaceli, whom they surrounded and persuaded to present petitions to the king.

This foreign regiment of the Royal Guard was recruited in the Austrian Netherlands and formed part of the permanent garrison of Madrid.

The priest's tone was ominous, and he promised to reduce the king's palace to rubble within two hours if the demands were not met.

However, upon hearing that Charles had left secretly for Aranjuez, anger spread that the king had simply accepted the demands in order to make his subsequent escape.

In reaction to these fears, some 30,000 people, including men, women, and children, surrounded the house of Diego Rojas Contreras, bishop of Cartagena and president of the Council of Castile.

The king replied with a letter that stated that he sincerely promised to comply with the demands of his people, and asked for calm and order.

Esquilache felt that his modernizing reforms had deserved a statue, and would comment that he had cleaned and paved the city streets and had created boulevards and had nevertheless been dismissed.

Still fearing for his own safety, Charles remained at Aranjuez, leaving the government in the hands of his minister Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda.

Aranda managed to convince these members that the chambergo and the long cape was nothing but the apparel of el verdugo –the hated hangman or executioner- and that no respectable person would wear such a thing.

One scholar states that "Charles III would never have dared to expel the Jesuits had he not been assured of the support of an influential party within the Spanish Church.