These instances illustrate the minute and watchful care which he exercised over all the details of the Holy Office. Nothing was too trivial to escape his vigilant attention, and this close supervision was continued to the end. The receiver of Valencia consults him about a carpenter's bill of ninety sueldos for repairs on the royal palace occupied by the tribunal and Ferdinand tells him, May 31, 1515, that he may pay it this time, but it is not to be a precedent. On January 18th of the same year he had written to the receiver of Jaen that he learns that the audience-chamber is ill-furnished and that the vestments for mass are lacking or worn out, wherefore he orders that what the inquisitors may purchase shall be paid for.[736] * * * * * Ferdinand's control over the Inquisition rested not only on the royal authority, the power of appointment, his own force of character and his intense interest in its workings, but also on the fact that he held the purse-strings. He had insisted that the confiscations should enure to the crown, and he subsequently obtained the pecuniary penances. The Inquisition had no endowment. One could easily have been provided out of the immense sums gathered from the victims during the early years of intense activity but, although some slender provision of the kind was at times attempted, either the chronic demands of the royal treasury or a prudent desire to prevent the independence of the institution rendered these investments fragmentary and wholly inadequate. Thus the expenses of the tribunals and the salaries of the officials were in his hands. Nothing could be paid without his authorization and the accounts of the receivers of confiscations, who acted as treasurers, were scrutinized with rigid care. He regulated the salary of every official and his letter-books are full of instructions as to their payment. Besides this, it was the Spanish custom to supplement inadequate wages with _ayudas de costa_, or gifts of greater or less amount as the whim of the sovereign or the deserts of the individual might call for. In time, as we shall see, this became a regular annual payment, subject to certain conditions but, under Ferdinand, it was still an uncertainty, dependent upon the royal favor and the order of the king was requisite in each case, even including the Suprema and its officials.[737] The crown thus held the Holy Office at its mercy and the recipients of its bounty could not resent its control. [Sidenote: _INDEPENDENCE IN MATTERS OF FAITH_]