inefficiency of the Inquisition to the fact that the inquisitors-general were obliged to appoint ignorant men who happened to possess prebends or other benefices.[732] [Sidenote: _AYUDA DE COSTA_] There were also the gratifications for house-rent, illuminations, bull-fights and mourning, which the officials of the tribunals enjoyed, like those of the Suprema, although not on so liberal a scale, while the ayudas de costa replaced the propinas.[733] There was also a kindly liberality in granting extra ayudas de costa to those in need and to their widows and children when they died. Applications of this kind were perpetual and innumerable; they were made to the Suprema, which naturally found little difficulty in being charitable at the expense of others.[734] It would be needless to enumerate examples of what was of such constant occurrence and these liberalities, together with the exemptions and the economies in the cost of the necessaries of life, rendered the financial position of the officials reasonably secure. Perhaps the resources of the tribunals might have justified larger salaries if they had not been drawn upon to supply the extravagance of the Suprema and been squandered on other objects with careless profusion characteristic of the age. Thus, in 1633, a Doctor Pastor de Costa, of the Royal Council of Catalonia, obtained from Inquisitor-general Zapata, on the plea of services rendered by his father, a grant of a hundred ducats a year, in silver, on the tribunal of Barcelona. Doubtless it was suspended during the Catalan revolt to be subsequently resumed and, in 1665, he applied to Arce y Reynoso to confirm it to him for life, but Arce only ordered it to be continued for four years. Not content with this, he asked for an ayuda de costa on the ground of his poverty.[735] It is not surprising that Philip V, as we have seen, in his attempted reform of 1705, forbade all grants of over thirty ducats without his confirmation. * * * * *