The chief ground of these complaints had concerned the delays that so commonly occurred in bringing an accused to trial. When a prisoner’s acquittal ultimately chanced to take place, it was after a long term of imprisonment for which there was no compensation or redress; and when the person so treated was a man of position and influence, it is natural that he would protest strongly against the treatment to which he had been subjected before it was discovered that no charge could be sustained against him. The real reason of these delays must not be supposed to lie in dilatoriness or sluggishness on the part of the inquisitors. Indeed, the excessive dispatch with which they conducted the affairs of their tribunal is a matter to the scandal of which Llorente draws attention more than once--and particularly in the course of chronicling the fact that in the year of its introduction into Toledo this court dealt--as we shall see--with no less than some 3,300 cases, 27 of the accused being burnt and the remainder penanced in various degrees. He protests with reason that it is utterly impossible that at such a rate of procedure evidence can properly have been sifted and any sort of justice done. Where delays took place they were the result of the extreme reluctance on the part of the Holy Office to allow any to go free upon whom its talons had once fastened. Thus, when even the slight degree or evidence necessary to enable the inquisitors to convict was lacking, they would delay in the daily hope that such evidence might be forthcoming, and by repeated examinations they would meanwhile seek to force the unfortunate prisoner into contradictions that should justify them in resorting to torture. In view of the explicit pontifical command, Torquemada was compelled to amend this state of things, at least in theory, by decreeing (Article III) that there should be no delays in proceeding to trial through lack of proof. Where proof was lacking, the accused should at once be restored to liberty, since he could at any time--when fresh proof was forthcoming--be rearrested. Similarly, with a view of expediting trials, he ordered (Article IV) that since in all the courts of the Inquisition there were not the necessary lawyers, henceforth, when a case was completed, the _dossier_ of the proceedings should be sent to the Grand Inquisitor himself, and he would then submit it to the lawyers of the Suprema, who would advise upon it. But he amply made up for what softening of rigour might be contained in these articles by the greater severity enjoined in some of the other decrees which he embodied in these “Instructions” of 1488. Finding that the inquisitors of Aragon had been departing from certain of his enactments of 1484, diluting them with the weaker rules that had obtained under the old Inquisition in that kingdom, he commanded that all inquisitors should proceed in strict obedience to the statutes contained in the past “Instructions.”