There was also a kind of imperfect or informal acquittal, which consisted in admitting the accused to bail at the end of the trial. It saved the tribunal from the trouble of a decision and of an acknowledgement that the prosecution had been in error, but it was cruel to the party involved, as it left him but partly liberated and with the stigma of heresy. Its working is fairly exemplified by the case of Petronila de Lucena, tried in 1534, at Toledo on a charge of Lutheranism. After nearly a year's incarceration, her brother, also under trial, revoked in the torture the evidence which he had given against her. There was no other testimony, yet she was not acquitted but merely released, March 20, 1535, under bail of a hundred thousand maravedis, to present herself when summoned. The security was furnished and she was delivered to the bondsmen as her gaolers. On June 27th, she petitioned for release, for the discharge of the bondsmen and for the removal of the sequestration, which included some articles of personal necessity in the hands of the gaoler; she was, she pleaded, poor and an orphan, she needed the property and wished to be free to dispose of herself. No notice was taken of this and, sixteen months later, on October 20, 1536, she applied again; this time an order to lift the sequestration was issued, but there is no record of her having been released from subjection to bail. She thus remained under the ban and, at the age of 25, the two careers open to a Spanish woman--marriage and the nunnery--were virtually closed to her.[298] There was yet another kind of acquittal, still more informal, in which the accused was simply discharged and bade to be gone, without a sentence, leaving him under the dreadful uncertainty of what might be his position. An instance of this is the case of Miguel Mezquita, tried for Lutheranism at Valencia, in 1536. The evidence was of the flimsiest, and the inquisitors merely ordered him to be released from prison without making further provision.[299]