When the efforts of counsel in behalf of their clients were thus effectually discouraged, nothing but the most perfunctory services could be expected from them, and the inquisitors need apprehend little trouble. Even this, however, was thought to give the accused too much chance, and all risk of inconvenient zeal was averted by depriving him of the right to select his defender and confining the function to one or two appointees of the tribunal, who could be relied upon to favor the faith. The first intimation of this policy comes in the memorials of Jaen and Llerena in 1506, which complain bitterly that the inquisitors refuse to allow the accused to select their advocates and procurators, forcing them to take such as they appoint who will do their bidding. The Jaen memorial describes them as enemies of the people, who desire arrests to be multiplied, as they charge three thousand maravedís in every case which, for the two hundred prisoners, amounts to six hundred thousand.[120] This abuse, probably originating with Lucero, was so conformable to the tendencies of the Holy Office that it gradually became the rule. In 1533, one of the petitions of the Córtes of Monzon was that prisoners should be allowed to select their advocates and procurators, and to this no direct answer was made.[121] In 1537 the _abogados de los presos_ were already recognized as officials appointed by the tribunals. They were exclusively entitled to conduct the defence and, in 1540, the Suprema, in reply to a petition, said that, if the party desired a different advocate, it could only be on condition that he should act in consultation with the official one. Even this poor privilege was withdrawn for, in 1562, Valdés decreed that the official counsel should communicate with no other advocate.[122] It is true that, in 1551, the Suprema had admitted that, if the tribunal had not been able to find a fitting lawyer for appointment, the accused could select one, but this was merely yielding to necessity.[123]
The chief qualification for an _abogado de los presos_ was his limpieza and that of his wife; his subservience to the tribunal was assured by his dependent position, but, to render this more absolute, about 1580 the Suprema ordered the Lima tribunal--and probably all others--to make its advocates familiars, an office which bound them to the strictest obedience.[124] Allowing for natural exaggeration, there is probably truth in the description given, in 1559, by Antonio Nieto, a prisoner in Valencia, to his cell-mate Pedro Luis Verga, who, after his first audience, was felicitating himself on Inquisitor Arteaga's promise to give him an advocate and a procurator. Nieto told him not to count upon it for, though the inquisitor might give him an advocate he would give him nothing good, but a fellow who would do only what the inquisitor wanted and, if by chance he asked for an advocate or a procurator not of the Inquisition, they would not serve for, if they went contrary to the inquisitor's wishes, he would get up some charge of false belief or want of respect and cast them into prison.[125]