It was wholly superfluous to plead for leniency. The Spanish Inquisition paid no attention to Gregory's brief, although, in 1629, it ordered the tribunals to follow its prescriptions, for it even began to show an increased tendency towards benignity. The severest sentence I have met at this period concerned a peculiarly scandalous case before the tribunal of Valladolid where, in 1625, the Trinitarian Fray Juan de Ramírez was accused by five youths and one woman, and besides he had once celebrated mass without confessing. He was verbally degraded, deprived perpetually of confessing and condemned to ten years of reclusion, lifelong exile from Burgos and a circular discipline in his convent. This was justice tempered with mercy, but there was much mercy and little justice, in 1637, in the case of the Franciscan Fray Alonso del Valle before the same tribunal. He was accused by two sisters of his Order; there was a vote in discordia and the Suprema ordered suspension of the case, but, before this could be done, there supervened two more witnesses with evidence of the foulest character. The result was a sentence April 14, 1638, of deprivation of confessing women, one year's reclusion and four years of exile from Toro and Astorga. Equally fortunate was the Dominican Fray Juan Gómez, accused by two women, with one of whom, for fifteen years, he had illicit relations in the chapels used for confession. Some sisters of his Order likewise denounced him and, for all this he was sentenced, February 4, 1638, to be deprived of confessing women and to Friday fasting for six months. Even greater was the benignity shown, in 1642, to the Licenciate Morales, cura of Robadillo, against whom there were two accusers. The vote of the consulta de fe on the _sumaria_ was not unanimous, when the Suprema cut the affair short by ordering suspension, with a private reprimand of the accused in the apartments of the inquisitor.[277] [Sidenote: _PUNISHMENT_]