Meanwhile, at each stage of the case, the accused was subjected to searching examination. By rule, this had to be conducted by the inquisitors, and if there were two, both were required to be present; as the Suprema declared, about 1520, this was necessary to enable them to vote intelligently.[182] The fiscal, very properly, was not allowed to be present, and the notaries or secretaries were ordered to confine themselves to their duties in recording and not to interpose questions. The general instructions for these examinations are praiseworthy. In 1518 the Suprema ordered the avoidance of superfluous questioning, as it might lead the accused to contradict himself through ignorance and, in 1529, as the result of a visitation of Saragossa, it rebuked the inquisitors for asking irrelevant questions instead of confining themselves to the subject matter, as required by the Instructions. The questions were to be clearly and intelligibly put, and the accused was to answer them categorically, yes or no. He was not to be deceived or misled by being made to believe that there was evidence where none existed, nor was he to be questioned about accomplices, unless there were sufficient indications concerning them.[183] Unlike the medieval Inquisition, where every kind of deceit was allowed to entrap the accused into compromising himself, the final rules, formally expressed by Pablo García, were that the inquisitors must carefully abstain from interrogating the prisoner about matters not included or indicated in the evidence, and from leading him to believe that mere suspicions were knowledge founded on proof.[184] Yet, with marked inconsistency, the monitions with which the trials opened, assumed, as we have seen, the guilt of the prisoner, that ample information existed of it, and that his confession was wanted for his own salvation. As a rule, in these earlier audiences, no questions were put except to ask the accused what he had remembered, and he was left to spontaneous confession, without a guide as to what was expected of him. Sometimes, however, in the later periods a special _audiencia de preguntas_ was ordered, which might last for several days, as in the case of Beatriz López, at Valladolid, in 1697.[185] Ordinarily the real examinations began when the accused answered to the accusation, and were continued after his replies to the publication. At any time, moreover, if he made admissions or a partial confession, the opportunity was taken, by skilful questioning, to bring him, step by step, to full acknowledgement of his offences. In this, leading questions were forbidden. All examinations were to be searching and thorough and, in 1654, the Suprema complained that many crimes remained unpunished because of the carelessness and looseness with which this duty was performed. Inquisitors in general were, therefore, instructed to repeat their questions again and again, until every detail of time, place and circumstance was ascertained.[186]