shared with a new official known as "secretario de actos positivos." The number moreover had greatly increased for, while at the early period, with its heavy work, a tribunal was allowed but two notaries, in the later time there were often four or five salaried secretaries, to whom were sometimes added honorary secretaries with entrance to the secreto and honorary secretaries without entrance.[697] [Sidenote: _THE ALGUAZIL_] There was also a notary of sequestrations, whose duties were highly important in the early times of abundant confiscations. He was always present when arrests were made, so as to draw up on the spot an inventory of the property seized, but, as confiscations diminished, the office became superfluous and was suppressed by a carta acordada of December 1, 1634. After this we hear of a superintendent of sequestrations, in 1647, and subsequently its occasional duties were discharged by some other official for a moderate compensation as, in 1670, in Valencia, the procurator of the fisc received twenty-five libras a year for attending to them.[698] * * * * * The alguazil was the executive officer of the tribunal. In the early lists of salaries his pay is the same as, or even larger than, that of the inquisitors, but this was because the prison was at his charge.[699] From this he was relieved, in 1515, by Ferdinand, who empowered the inquisitors to appoint _carceleros_, at a salary of five hundred sueldos, after which the wages of the alguazil declined to those of the secretaries and even of the alcaide who succeeded him as gaoler.[700] His superior dignity, however, was recognized in a carta acordada of May 13, 1610, which provided that in public functions he should have precedence over the secretaries.[701] His long wand of office, which exceeded that of secular alguaziles, was also a distinction and when, in 1576, the alguaziles of the Santa Cruzada in Barcelona ventured to imitate him, the Suprema ordered the inquisitors to punish them.[702]