The executive was to consist of some two thousand horsemen and a number of foot-soldiers to be held in perpetual readiness to pursue and punish evildoers. At the head of this force was placed Ferdinand’s illegitimate brother, Alfonso, Duke of Villahermosa; and below him captains for each locality, whose business it was to raise the hue and cry, as soon as a well-authenticated tale of crime came to their ears. Wherever there was a case of burglary or rape; wherever, in the open country some assault or act of violence was perpetrated; or if the offender, having committed his crime within the precincts of a town, fled for safety to the woods and fields beyond the walls; or if, being charged with some offence, he resisted the summons, the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the local Hermandad. Raising his force, the captain of the district must pursue his man relentlessly, summoning to him as he went all the privates and officers of the Brotherhood within sound of his alarm, till at some five leagues distant from his home, a colleague would take up the chase; and so from boundary to boundary the suspected criminal would be hunted down. Led back in triumph to the scene of the crime, he would be hailed at once before the local “Alcaldes,” or Judges of the Hermandad, and there, if convicted, receive summary justice, of which this one thing was certain, that it would not err on the side of mercy. The least punishment administered was mutilation, the loss of a foot for some small robbery that the thief, whatever his inclinations, should have power to steal no more. In the majority of cases there was but one sentence—“death.” A priest was fetched, and the convicted man, having confessed his sins and received the Sacraments as a “Catholic Christian,” was at once bound to a tree, and there met his doom from the arrows of the troopers who had so lately captured him. Of the lasting power of the repentance expressed by such ruffians contemporaries had their doubts, for an ordinance of the Hermandad commanded that the guilty man “should die as speedily as possible that his soul might pass from him with the greater safety.” The whole of the proceedings, from the hasty trial to the merciless sentence and its immediate enactment, bears the taint of barbarism. It can only be estimated rightly in connection with the burning homesteads and their murdered and tortured inhabitants that such stern justice came to check. One safeguard against local tyranny the regulations of the Hermandad provided,—an appeal in doubtful cases from the Alcaldes to a central Junta, or Supreme Court, and if necessary beyond that to the sovereigns themselves. Save for royal supervision the decisions of this court, which was composed of a deputy from each province with the Bishop of Cartagena as its president, were absolute; and thus it was given full scope for its work of controlling the different branches and for securing cohesion between their officials.