But an arrangement, which was justified, and perhaps rendered imperative, by the conditions prevailing when the Inquisition began, was continued indefinitely, and maintained when not the witnesses but the defendant belonged to an unpopular minority and stood in urgent need of some protection. How could anyone put on trial make an effective answer to the charges brought against him when he was never allowed to confront the witnesses, did not even know their identity, and was permitted to see only a _précis_ of their testimony? It is obvious that the system, whatever its origin, became in course of time a positive encouragement to delation and a temptation to perjury. But it is only right to add that the Inquisition, both in the Middle Ages and later on, showed itself at times extremely severe in punishing proved cases of false witness.[390] Nevertheless, as a rule, the Inquisition was not at all nice in its selection of evidence, and certainly not impartial. It accepted the evidence of persons who were debarred from bearing testimony in the secular courts. It even accepted the evidence of one heretic against another, though it never admitted that the evidence of one heretic in favour of another had the slightest validity.[391] Similarly the Inquisition permitted, indeed encouraged, husbands to testify against their wives, children against parents, servants against masters; though their favourable testimony was rejected.[392] The rules as regards age seem to have varied in different countries; but certainly it is, generally speaking, true that persons were permitted to give evidence before the Holy Office at an age when their testimony would not have been received in a lay court. We even hear of a case at Montségur of a child of six incriminating members of his own family and many others. The ordinary rules regarding the status and character of witnesses were similarly in abeyance. Criminals and men of infamous reputation, homicides, harlots, proved perjurers and excommunicates were none of them debarred from giving evidence against heretics.