Sentences to imprisonment continued as usual, but growing indifference as to providing for their execution is indicated by a correspondence between Barcelona and the Suprema in 1718. At that time the tribunal had but four cases under trial; it still occupied the ancient royal palace but, after it had condemned for Judaism María Meneses to irremissible, and her daughter Catalina de Solis, to perpetual prison, it did not know what to do with them and applied for instructions. There was, it said, no penitential prison nor could it find that there ever had been one, neither was there an alcaide; it possessed no house that could be used for the purpose, and no official could be spared from his other duties. The Suprema replied by inquiring whether there was a prison for familiars in which a room could be used for the women, or whether some little house near the palace could be had and some official or familiar could serve as alcaide. The tribunal rejoined negativing the proposed use of the prison for familiars; it would see whether a house could be had, but there was no money for the purpose; as for the officials, they were all fully occupied and no one would take the position without salary. This the Suprema met with a peremptory order to rent a little house and appoint an alcaide at the ordinary wages. Under this pressure some kind of provision must have been made for, in an auto of January 31, 1723, the tribunal condemned four Judaizers to irremissible prison.[437] During the recrudescence of persecution at this period, the number of condemnations to imprisonment was large; in the Granada auto of December 21, 1720, there were twenty-seven and, in sixty-four autos between 1721 and 1727, there were seven hundred and forty.[438] How these numerous prisoners were accommodated it would be difficult to guess, for the neglect of the penitential prisons was progressive and, in the census of all the tribunals, about 1750, but three reported to have alcaides--Córdova, Granada and Murcia.[439] It does not follow that others had not prisons, but only that they had no prisoners and cared to have none. For instance, in 1794, when the Suprema inquired of Valencia whether its prison would suit for the priest Juan Fernández Sotelo, whose health required a change from the convent where he was recluded, the tribunal craftily replied that its prison was constructed with cells and dungeons and that, in the eyes of the people, confinement in it produced infamy, so that quarters for Sotelo had better be found in some convent in the suburbs. Apparently it forgot all this when, in 1802, it complained that the salaries of its secretaries had not been raised in 1795, while that of the alcaide of the penitential prison had been increased from a hundred and twenty to twenty-two hundred reales, although he had nothing to do, and enjoyed the use of a house in the prison as good as those of the inquisitors.[440] [Sidenote: _DURATION OF IMPRISONMENT_]