From various indications we may assume that the confidential posts in the secreto were not sold and that offices of active duty in the tribunals were sold only when vacated, although a decree of 1641 shows that they were vacated for the purpose. The prices realized were large. February 6, 1644, Valencia reported that the sale by auction of the unimportant office of depositario de pretendientes for 6000 reales of full-weight silver had been cancelled because the purchaser insisted that it conferred the exemptions of an office in the secreto.[574] A reply of the Suprema, February 11, 1643, to a request from Philip for means to pay 400 foot and 200 horse for eight months, gives us the prices fetched by a number of positions and also shows that the terms varied from spot cash to instalments running through a year or two. In Murcia, it says, there were still due 3500 ducats vellon for the offices of auditor and notary of sequestrations; in Seville the receivership had been auctioned for 8500 ducats, of which 2000 were in silver, and there was still due 1000 ducats in silver for an auditorship; in Llerena the notariat of sequestrations had brought at auction 3000 ducats vellon; in Logroño the auditorship had fetched 1000 ducats vellon; in Toledo the receivership had been sold at auction for 6360 ducats vellon; in Córdova the receivership had brought 5000 ducats, one-fourth in silver; the aggregate, payable at various periods, was 4250 ducats silver and 24,110 ducats vellon--but the final remark of the Suprema shows the incurable prodigality of Philip, even in his deepest distress, for it quietly adds that none of this is available because it had all been granted by royal decree to Don Pedro Pacheco, a member of the Suprema.[575] We are told that when, in 1643, Arce y Reynoso assumed the inquisitor-generalship, he recognized that there were too many supernumeraries and that he prohibited the sale of offices until further orders. If so, the intermission was but temporary, for a royal decree of 1648 shows that it was still going on, and, in 1710, we happen to hear of the sale in Valencia of a notariat del juzgado for four lives for 16,000 reales.[576] In 1715 the tribunal of Peru seems to have been doing a little business of the kind on its own account, which the Suprema promptly stopped, stigmatizing it as simoniacal.[577] This probably indicates that it had ceased in Spain, but the custom of selling for three or four lives seems to have been conducive to longevity, for many continued to be thus held until late in the eighteenth century. An investigation ordered, in 1783, into the records concerning them, indicates that there were still survivors, or at least claimants, whose titles were to be scrutinized.[578]