It does not follow that the establishment of prisons was attended with any increased strictness of discipline. The Inquisition persistently refused to accept the burden of supporting its prisoners and left them to shift for themselves. Where prisons existed there were few penitents in them, although condemnations to imprisonment were frequent and, in 1641, Philip IV conceived the idea of liberating them all. The Suprema sent his decree to the tribunals with orders to report whether they had any prisoners and what were their cases, to which Valencia replied that it had one, imprisoned for persistent sorcery, whereupon the Suprema ordered the sentence to be commuted and the prisoner to be discharged.[433] The royal project fell through. All prisons were not as empty as that of Valencia and a discussion occurring, in 1654, at Granada, to which allusion has already been made, illustrates the character of the imprisonment rendered necessary by the refusal to support the prisoners. They gained their living chiefly by hawking goods around the city; this at length aroused the shopkeepers, and the corregidor represented to the tribunal that scandals were occasioned by their entering houses and committing indecencies; there was loss to the king for, as penitents, they were not subject to the _alcavala_ and other imposts; thus favored they undersold the shopkeepers, who had lost half of their trade, while the penitents grew rich, for they came almost naked from the secret prison and, in a short time, they were well clothed and enriched. The tribunal admitted the force of this and, on December 24, 1654, issued an order that, for two weeks, they might cry their wares through the streets, but not enter houses, and subsequently be restricted to selling in shops. At this the prisoners complained bitterly of the deprivation of a privilege of long standing in all places where there was a tribunal, for without it they could not earn a living or support their wives and families. Thereupon the fiscal, Doctor Joseph Francisco Cresco de Escobar, seeing that both sides would appeal to the Suprema, printed for its enlightenment a memorial which reveals to us the character of penitential imprisonment. He states that, in accordance with the Instructions of 1488, the tribunals had provided penitential prisons, the one at Granada being of ample capacity for the observance of the Instructions of 1561. He quotes the canons and conciliar decrees to show that recanting heretics are to be immured for life, whence he argues that the prison should be afflictive and penal. Now, however, it is only nominal; the so-called prisoners go out at all hours of the day, without restriction, without a companion, without labor save what they voluntarily undertake, all of which is liberty and not captivity. They wander at will through the city and suburbs, they amuse themselves at the houses of their friends, they spend, if they choose, only part of