The advocate thus became one of the officials of the tribunal, duly salaried and working in full accord with the inquisitors. In 1584, we find him of Valencia petitioning to have a place assigned to him in the autos de fe, where he could be recognized as such and, at his ease, see his clients sentenced. The petition was granted and he was allotted the last place among the salaried and commissioned officers.[126] This became the established rule, but in time professional dignity was wounded at thus being relegated to a position inferior to the messengers and apparitors and gaolers.
In Valladolid and Granada the advocates obtained promotion to outrank the physicians and surgeons and, in 1670, the Licentiate Juan Márquez, advocate in the Seville tribunal, addressed to the Suprema a formidable memorial of seventy-five quarto pages of text and fifteen of index, representing the slight thus put upon them, and setting forth the dignity of the legal profession, the respect due to its learning and, as regards the advocates of prisoners, the confidential position occupied and the fidelity with which they served the tribunals. It seems never to have occurred to him to put forward a claim based upon fidelity to their clients.[127]
In fact, the so-called advocate was simply an official instrument for securing confession and conviction, for which his ostensible position of friendly adviser gave him peculiar opportunity. No communication between him and his client was allowed, except in presence of the inquisitors and of the secretary, who made record of all that passed between them, thus keeping watch to see that he performed his duty. It is true that he was sworn to defend the prisoner with all care and diligence and fidelity, if there was ground for it, and if not to undeceive him, but his real duty is described as urging the prisoner to confess fully as to himself and others, and to throw himself upon the mercy of the tribunal, for by denial he would only prejudice his case and suffer in the end.[128] How any deviation from this was treated, appears in the case of Benito Ferrer, in 1621, before the Toledo tribunal. In the consultation, his advocate Argendona suggested some points of defence displeasing to the inquisitors, who promptly ordered him out of the audience-chamber and sent Benito back to his cell to refresh his memory and discharge his conscience, and two days later Argendona had to put in the written defence without further opportunity of conference. The Licentiate Egas had a more accurate conception of his duty, when serving as advocate for Isabel Reynier, tried, in 1571, for Protestantism in Toledo. The official record states that, after unavailing efforts to induce her to confess, he asked whether she had any enemies to disable, on which he could frame a defence, when she named several, but, as the Señores Inquisidores wanted to despatch the case, he told her that this would avail her nothing, for there was no presumption that enmity had caused false-witness, and he went on to persuade her that she had already confessed enough to render her case hopeless. The impatience of the inquisitors was gratified, for the unfortunate woman was sent to the stake without Egas troubling them by putting in a written defence.[129]