While thus the Suprema was vainly busied in repressing the exuberance of its subordinates, it fiercely resented any assistance offered by outsiders. The Concordia of 1553 was part of the law of the land, and as such it was printed in the official Nueva Recopilacion (Lib. IV, Tit. i, ley 20). In 1634 the Council of Castile, apparently wearied with the stubbornness of the tribunals, undertook to enforce it by printing the articles concerning the numbers and qualifications of familiars and sending them to the magistrates of the towns and villages with instructions that, if the number was in excess, they were to strike off the surplus; if a list had not been furnished, they were not to regard any one as a familiar and entitled to exemptions and privileges. When this practical method of enforcing obedience to law came to the knowledge of the Suprema, it was highly incensed. On December 22nd it addressed an indignant consulta to the king; the Council of Castile, it said, was meddling with concerns wholly beyond its competence; it had no authority in matters concerning the Inquisition; if inquisitors transgressed the law, specific complaints could be made and settled in a junta of the two bodies; the Council was leading the local magistrates to sit in judgement on inquisitors and get themselves into trouble. Besides the familiars are so molested when they seek to avail themselves of their privileges that they think it better to abandon them; they are fewer already than the Concordia permits, are diminishing daily and, in a few years, the Inquisition will not have ministers to attend to its business. The consulta concludes by asking the king to order the Council to erase the paper from its records and not to issue similar ones in future. For once this arrogance overshot the mark. There must have been a desperate contest waged over the matter for Philip kept the consulta until October 3, 1636, when he returned it with the endorsement that the Council of Castile can issue the provision embodying the articles of the Concordia and can order the local magistrates to observe and execute them.[807] * * * * *