When brought to trial he was frank in his admissions; two years before he had been deprived of confessing Spanish women, but as guardian he had licence to do so; he mentioned seven Indian women whom he had seduced in confession besides a mestizo and several Spaniards. In these cases, the accusation of the fiscal and the exordium of the sentence are eloquently rhetorical as to the heinous guilt in one, clothed with the awful power of the priesthood, using that power to lead astray the souls seeking salvation through him, but when it came to defining the penalty there is a tenderness which suggests that in reality the offence was regarded as much less important than aberration on some minute point of faith. When his sentence was read, May 5, 1584, he was subjected to the discipline for the space of a _miserere_; he was deprived of the faculty of confessing, was suspended from orders for six years, was recluded for two years in a convent with the customary disabilities and was banished for six years from the see of Guadalajara.[477] Such treatment was not adapted to strengthen the carnal-minded against temptation so severe and the vice flourished accordingly. As the inquisitors stated in a letter to the Suprema of May 22, 1619, it was a very frequent offence in those parts and many confessors regarded it as trivial,[478] and the list of cases of solicitation for the years 1622-4 contains fifty-six names, of which seven were from Manila, for the Philippines were a dependency of the Mexican tribunal. That leniency increased with time may be assumed from the case, in 1721, of Fray Francisco Diego de Zarate, President of the Mission of Santa María de los Angeles of Rio Blanca, a Franciscan entrusted with many important positions. The summary in his trial states that the evidence collected proved a hundred and twenty-six acts of solicitation with fifty-six women and that it was his habit to solicit every one who came to him to confess. It is impossible to conceive anything more brutal than some of the details of the evidence; the offence in many cases was almost public and might have continued indefinitely had he not banished from Rio Blanco a woman and her family because she resisted him, whereupon she talked and created a scandal that rendered action necessary. Of the women, twenty-one were Indians, eight were Spaniards (one of them his near relative), eight Mulattos, four Mestizos and fifteen whose race is not specified. When the accusation, detailing all the cases, was read to him, he admitted its correctness and indeed he had previously made a written confession which contained a large number that had escaped the investigations of the prosecution. Aggravated as was this case Fray Francisco escaped with a second reading of his sentence in the Franciscan convent, where a circular discipline was administered, perpetual deprivation of confessing and of active and passive voice in his Order, six months’ suspension from celebrating mass and two years’