The custom of allowing counsel in criminal cases is so comparatively recent in English law that their admission by the Inquisition may be regarded as an evidence of desire to render justice. In Spain, however, it was customary, and defendants too poor to retain them were supplied at the public expense. In the royal chancellería, as organized by Ferdinand and Isabella, there were two _abogados de los pobres_.[112] In the medieval Inquisition, during its earlier centuries, counsel were not allowed to the accused and it became a settled principle of the canon law that advocates who undertook the defence of heretics were suspended from their functions and were perpetually infamous.[113] Towards the close of the fifteenth century, however, in witchcraft trials, we find advocates admitted, but under the strict limitations that we shall see in Spain, and those who showed themselves too zealous in defence of their clients were subject to excommunication as fautors of heresy.[114] When the Spanish Inquisition was founded, it was therefore a matter of course that the accused should be allowed the assistance of trained lawyers and not only this but of procurators, who attended to the business of the defence, performing the functions, in some sort, of the English solicitor, while the _letrado_ represented the barrister and drew up the argument. In a number of trials at Ciudad Real, in 1483, there appears to have been considerable freedom of choice, the accused selecting both advocates and procurators. During the persecution at Guadalupe, in 1485, the defendants were mostly represented by Doctor de Villaescusa as advocate and by Juan de Texeda as procurator, and the arguments in defence were well and forcibly presented.[115] This was in accordance with the Instructions of 1484, which order that if the accused shall ask for an advocate and procurator, the inquisitors shall grant the request, receiving from the advocate an oath to assist him faithfully, without cavils or malicious delays, but that if, at any stage of the case, he finds that his client has not justice on his side, he will help him no longer and report to the inquisitors; if the accused has property, they shall be paid from it, but if he has none they shall be paid out of other confiscations, for such are the orders of the sovereigns.[116] Yet this liberality was nullified by the clause requiring advocates to betray their clients, thus destroying all confidence between them and fatally crippling the defence. It was, however, in accordance with the ethics of the age, and we shall see how it developed in a manner to render illusory the services of the advocate.