Gradually these records became an immense storehouse of minute and detailed information concerning all heretics and suspects and their kindred. Under the Instructions of 1561, the first thing in examining a prisoner was to require of him an account of parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, with their wives and children and whether any of them had been arrested or penanced by the Inquisition.[763] Then, when the accused was brought to profess conversion and to beg mercy, his confession was not accepted unless he gave information, to the best of his ability, as to all other heretics, whether kindred or strangers, whom he had known or heard of, with details as to their culpability. All this was carefully entered and indexed, until the records became a fairly complete directory of the suspects of Spain. A Jew arrested in Granada might compromise twenty others, scattered from Compostella to Barcelona, each of whom when seized became a new source of information, and the intercommunication established between the tribunals placed the records of all at the service of each. This vastly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered the chances of escape slender indeed. The trials of the seventeenth century, when the system became fairly perfected, show that, although the arrest of a few might scatter their accomplices, the Inquisition was ever on their track and change of name and habitation was unavailing. As soon as a suspect was arrested and his genealogy was obtained, the sister tribunals were called upon for reports, and testimony poured in, reaching back, perhaps, for twenty or thirty years, concerning himself and his kindred. The net of the Inquisition covered the land and its meshes were fine. Go where they would, hide themselves as they might, the Judaizers lived in the knowledge that it was ever remorselessly in pursuit and that its hand might fall upon them at any time. [Sidenote: _RECORDS_]