The laxity of quartering penitents on public institutions or in private houses led to impracticable rules in the effort to counteract its evils. An instruction issued about this time by the Suprema orders that no one be admitted to reconciliation without condemning him to confiscation and perpetual prison, if he has been a heretic, and those thus condemned must perform their penance most rigidly, not speaking with any one except on the days when they go to mass and hear sermons; on other days, both in going out and in eating, they must show themselves true penitents, holding no intercourse with wives and children.[420] This seems to have received scant obedience and, in 1506, the Suprema ordered that sanbenitos be placed on all prisoners, and that they must not leave their houses and then, in 1509, it prescribed that perpetual prisons must be provided. Apparently this was partially successful, for it was followed by instructions that all who had been or should be condemned must be placed in them, where they can ply their trades, or their kindred can supply them with food, or they may beg alms for their support. Thus, in 1510, Llerena selected two pairs of houses for the purpose, which Ferdinand ordered the governor of Leon to have appraised. Cuenca also seems to have obtained a prison, but an inadequate one, for in 1511 the Suprema authorized the tribunal to permit all the sick, and all who had been confined for two years, to betake themselves to their homes. Where such prisons existed the discipline must have been exceedingly lax for, in 1512, the Suprema issued a general provision empowering the tribunals to allow the destitute occupants of the perpetual prisons to go out by turns to beg in the cities, but they must wear their sanbenitos and return by nightfall, under penalty of relapse, and this was repeated in 1513. Then the further effort to provide prisons seems to have been abandoned for, in 1514, Ximenes issued an order permitting the reconciled to fulfil their penances in their own homes.[421] [Sidenote: _THE PENITENTIAL PRISON_] This fluctuating policy and the extraordinary laxity which it reveals were not due to any humanitarian impulses. It was simply a continuous effort to shirk the responsibility of maintaining those whose property had been confiscated, and who were required by the canons to be incarcerated for life. The Inquisition obtained the plunder, it inflicted on its victims disabilities, which increased enormously the difficulty of self-support, it rendered them odious to the population by making them wear the sanbenito, it was in duty bound to provide prisons where they could be immured and prevented from infecting the community, but it neglected this duty and virtually told them that they might beg or starve. That death by starvation, indeed, was not uncommon is asserted in the project of reform drawn up, in 1518, by order of Charles V.