In its relations with the tribunals the Suprema had even greater success. As it gradually absorbed the inquisitor-general, it exercised his power, which was virtually unlimited and irresponsible, over them, until it became a centralized oligarchy of the most absolute kind. To this, of course, the progressive improvement in communication largely contributed. In the earlier period, the delays and expenses of special messengers and couriers rendered it necessary for the local tribunals to be virtually independent in the routine business of arresting, trying, sentencing and punishing offenders. Only matters about which there could be dispute or which involved consequences of importance, would warrant the delay and expense of consulting the central head. Items in the accounts and allusions in the correspondence show that, when this was necessary, the outlay for a messenger was a subject to be carefully weighed. The matter was complicated by the fact that the central head was perambulating, moving with the court from one province to another, and its precise seat at any one moment might be unknown to those at a distance. The permanent choice of Madrid as a capital by Philip II--broken by a short transfer to Valladolid--was favorable to centralization, and still more so was the development of the post-office, establishing regular communication at a comparatively trivial cost, although at first the Inquisition was somewhat chary about confiding its secret documents to the postmen. At first there was hesitation in intruding upon the functions of the tribunals. A letter of November 10, 1493, from the Suprema to the inquisitors of Toledo, asks as a favor for the information on which a certain arrest had been made, explaining that this was at the especial request of the queen.[454] Where there was not unanimity, however, a reference to some higher authority was essential, and we have seen that, in 1488, Torquemada ordered that all such cases should be sent to him to be decided in the Suprema and, in 1507, Ximenes went further and required all cases in which the accused did not confess to be sent to the Council.[455] This seems speedily to have become obsolete, but the rule as to _discordia_ was permanent. In 1509 a letter of the Suprema extends it to arrests and all other acts on which votes were taken, when a report with all the opinions was to be forwarded for its decision.[456] The costs attendant on these references were not small, for we happen to meet with an order, May 23, 1501, to pay to Inquisitor Mercado a hundred ducats for his expenses and sickness while at the court examining the cases brought from his tribunal of Valencia. Possibly for this reason references to the Suprema were not encouraged for, about this time, it ordered that none should be brought to it except those in which there was discordia, and in these it expected that the parties should be represented by counsel.[457] The same motive may