Like his predecessors, Julius, with one hand, sold letters of absolution and inhibition while, with the other, he declared them invalid. A brief of November 9, 1507, recites that some persons, pretending to be aggrieved, have appealed to the Holy See, whereby the Inquisition is impeded; therefore he decrees that all appeals must be to the inquisitor-general, while those to Rome are to be regarded as null; the inquisitors are to disregard them and not to delay on account of them.[312] Still, the output of these letters was unchecked and for awhile Ferdinand fluctuated in his policy with regard to them. Sometimes, as in a Sardinia case, in 1508, he orders the inquisitor to arrest and punish severely those concerned in procuring them, assuring him of the royal protection against the indignation of Rome.[313] Sometimes, as in a Valladolid case, in 1509, he assumes the current convenient fiction that the letters are issued surreptitiously, that the pope, on better information, will withdraw them, and meanwhile they are held suspended; the trial is to go on and the sequestrations are not to be lifted.[314] Finally, in a pragmática of August 31, 1509, a definite policy was adopted combining both methods and based on the principle that, if the letters were surreptitious, those who obtained them deserved condign punishment. This required all such briefs to be submitted to the Suprema for examination and reference back to Rome; if found to be rightly issued, exequatur would be granted, but without this any one presenting such letters to inquisitors incurred, as in the pragmática of December 15, 1484, irremissible death and confiscation; notaries acting under them were deprived of office, while secular officials were commanded to execute the edict under pain of five thousand florins and ecclesiastics under seizure of temporalities and perpetual exile.[315] The ferocity of this, after a constant struggle with the curia for twenty-five years, shows the importance attached by Ferdinand to the autonomy of the Inquisition and his determination to suppress all papal interference. Still that interference continued and Ferdinand could not but recognize that it was legal. In a case occurring in 1510, when a certain Augustinian Fray Dionisio, on trial before the tribunal of Seville, obtained letters committing the case to a judge who inhibited the tribunal, Ferdinand requested the pope to evoke the case and commit it to Cardinal Ximenes and further that all future cases of the kind should be similarly treated.[316]