The Inquisition thus vindicated the necessity of its existence if the land was to be purified of heresy and apostasy, for some of the Judaizers had been practising their unhallowed rites for an incredible length of time. García González Bermejero, who was burnt in 1579, had been thus outraging the faith in Mexico for twenty years; Juan Castellanos, who repented and was reconciled in 1590, had done so for forty-eight years. Although their Judaism was almost public, for they ate the paschal lamb and smeared their houses with blood, they were only discovered through the confession of an accomplice tried in Spain, who denounced González. Of a family of Portuguese Jews who suffered in 1592, and the following years, we are told that the father, Francisco Rodríguez Mattos, was a rabbi and a dogmatizer, or teacher. Fortunately for him he was dead and was only burnt in effigy, as was likewise his son, who escaped by flight. His four daughters repented and were reconciled. They were in high social position and a cultured race, for it is said that the youngest, a girl of seventeen, could recite all the psalms of David and could repeat the prayer of Esther and other Hebrew songs backwards. A brother of these girls, Luis de Carvajal, was governor of the province of New Leon and a man who had rendered essential service to the crown; for the crime of not denouncing them, he was prosecuted, publicly penanced as a fautor of heresy and deprived of his office; he relapsed, was tried and tortured in 1595 and was burnt in the auto of December 8, 1596, together with his mother and three sisters.[413] The men who founded the Mexican Inquisition knew their duty and were resolute in its performance. They were kept busy for, between 1574 and 1600, they despatched no less than 879 cases, or an average of about thirty-four per annum.[414] Considering the complex character of inquisitorial procedure, with its inevitable delays and consumption of time, this represents a creditable degree of industry, equal to that of the great tribunal of Toledo which, at the same period, was averaging thirty-five cases per annum.