The ceremony was organised with unprecedented pomp and splendour. The king came in state, rejoicing that several notable heretics had been reserved to die in torments, for his especial delectation. His heir, Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, was also present but under compulsion; he was, at that time, no more than fourteen years of age and had writhed with agony at the sight of the suffering at the former auto. Moreover, when called upon to swear fidelity to the Inquisition, he had taken the oath with great reluctance. Not so King Philip, who when called upon to take the same oath at the second auto da fé, rose in his place, drew his sword and brandished it as he swore to show every favour to the Holy Office and support its ministers against whomsoever might directly or indirectly impede its efforts or affairs. "Asi lo juro," he said with deep feeling. "Thus I swear."
The victims at this great auto da fé were many and illustrious. One was Don Carlos de Seso, an Italian of noble family, the son of a bishop, a scholar who had long been in the service of the Emperor Charles V, and was chief magistrate of Toro. He had married a Spanish lady and resided at Logroño, where he became an object of suspicion as a professor of Lutheranism, and was arrested. They took him to the prison of Valladolid, where he was charged, tortured and condemned to die. When called upon to make confession, he wrote two full sheets denouncing the Catholic teaching, claiming that it was at variance with the true faith of the gospel. The priests argued with him in vain, and he was brought into church next morning, gagged, and so taken to the burning place, "lest he should speak heresy in the hearing of the people." At the stake the gag was removed and he was again exhorted to recant but he stoutly refused and bade them light up the fire speedily so that he might die in his belief.
Much grief was felt by the Dominicans at the lapse of one of their order, Fray Domingo de Rojas, who was undoubtedly a Lutheran. On his way to the stake he strove to appeal to the king who drove him away and ordered him to be gagged. More than a hundred monks of his order followed him close entreating him to recant, but he persisted in a determined although inarticulate refusal until in sight of the flames. He then recanted and was strangled before being burned. One Juan Sanchez, a native of Valladolid, had fled to Flanders, but was pursued, captured and brought back to Spain to die on this day. When the cords which had bound him snapped in the fire, he bounded into the air with his agony but still repelled the priests and called for more fire. Nine more were burned in the presence of the king, who was no merely passive spectator, but visited the various stakes and ordered his personal guard to assist in piling up the fuel.
The congregation at Seville were sentenced at autos held in 1559 and 1560. On December 22d of the latter year, there were fourteen burned in the flesh and three in effigy. The last were notable people. One was Doctor Egidio, who had been a leading canon of Seville Cathedral, and who had been tried and forced to recant his heresies in 1552. After release he renewed his connection with the Lutherans, but soon died and was buried at Seville. His corpse was exhumed, brought to trial, and burnt with his effigy; all his property was confiscated and his memory declared infamous. Another was Doctor Ponce de la Fuente, a man of deep learning and extraordinary eloquence who had been chaplain and preacher to the emperor. He followed the Imperial Court into Germany, then returned to charm vast congregations in Seville, but his sermons were reported by spies to be tainted with the Reformed doctrines. He was seized by the Inquisition and many incriminating papers were also taken. When cast into a secret dungeon and confronted with these proofs of his heresy, he would make no confession, nor would he betray any of his friends. He was transferred to a subterranean cell, damp and pestiferous, so narrow he could barely move himself, and was deprived of the commonest necessaries of life. Existence became impossible under such conditions, and he died, proclaiming with his last breath that neither Scythians nor cannibals could be more cruel and inhuman than the barbarians of the Holy Office. The third effigy consumed was that of Doctor Juan Pérez de Pineda, then a fugitive in Geneva.
Chief among the living victims was Julian Hernandez, commonly called el Chico, "the little," from his diminutive stature. Yet his heart was of the largest and his courage extraordinary. He was a deacon in the Reformed Church and dared to penetrate the interior of Spain, disguised as a muleteer, carrying merchandise in which Lutheran literature was concealed. Being exceedingly shrewd and daring he travelled far and wide, beyond Castile into Andalusia, distributing his books among persons of rank and education in all the chief cities. His learning, skill in argument, and piety, were not less remarkable than the diligence and activity by which he baffled all efforts to lay hold of him. At last he was caught and imprisoned. Relays of priests were told off to controvert his opinions, and he was repeatedly tortured to extract the names of those who had aided him in his long and dangerous pilgrimage through the Peninsula, but he was staunch and silent to the last.
A citizen of London, one Nicholas Burton, was a shipmaster who traded to Cadiz in his own vessel. He was arrested on the information of a "familiar" of the Inquisition, charged with having spoken in slighting terms of the religion of the country. No reason was given him, and when he protested indignantly, he was thrown into the common gaol and detained there for a fortnight, during which he was moved to administer comfort and preach the gospel to his fellow-prisoners. This gave a handle to his persecutors and he was removed on a further charge of heresy to Seville, where he was imprisoned, heavily ironed in the secret gaol of the Inquisition in the Triana. At the end he was condemned as a contumacious Lutheran, and was brought out, clad in the sanbenito and exposed in the great hall of the Holy Office with his tongue forced out of his mouth. Last of all, being obdurate in his heresy, he was burned and his ship with its cargo was taken possession of by his persecutors.
The story does not end here. Another Englishman, John Frampton, an attorney of Bristol, was sent to Cadiz by a part-owner to demand restoration of the ship. He became involved in a tedious law suit and was at last obliged to return to England for enlarged powers. Bye and bye he went out a second time to Spain, and on landing at Cadiz was seized by the servants of the Inquisition and carried to Seville. He travelled on mule back "tied by a chain that came three times under its belly and the end whereof was fastened in an iron padlock made fast to the saddle bow." Two armed familiars rode beside him, and thus escorted and secured, he was conveyed to the old prison and lodged in a noisome dungeon. The usual interrogatories were put to him and it was proved to the satisfaction of the Holy Office that he was an English heretic. The same evidence sufficed to place him on the rack, and after fourteen months, he was taken to be present as a penitent at the same auto da fé which saw Burton, the ship's captain, done to death. Frampton went back to prison for another year and was forbidden to leave Spain. He managed to escape and returned to England to make full revelation of his wrongs, but the ship was never surrendered and no indemnity was obtained.
Other Englishmen fell from time to time into the hands of the Inquisition. Hakluyt preserved the simple narratives of two English sailors, who were brought by their Spanish captors from the Indies as a sacrifice to the "Holy House" of Seville, though the authenticity of the statement has been attacked. One, a happy-go-lucky fellow, Miles Phillips, who had been too well acquainted in Mexico with the dungeons of the Inquisition, slipped over the ship's side at San Lucar, near Cadiz, made his way to shore, and boldly went to Seville, where he lived a hidden life as a silk-weaver, until he found his chance to steal away and board a Devon merchantman. The other, Job Hortop, added to his two years of Mexican imprisonment, two more years in Seville. Then "they brought us out in procession," as he tells us, "every one of us having a candle in his hand and the coat with S. Andrew's cross on our backs; they brought us up on an high scaffold, that was set up in the place of S. Francis, which is in the chief street in Seville; there they set us down upon benches, every one in his degree and against us on another scaffold sate all the Judges and the Clergy on their benches. The people wondered and gazed on us, some pitying our case, others said, 'Burn those heretics.' When we had sat there two hours, we had a sermon made to us, after which one called Bresina, secretary to the Inquisition, went up into the pulpit with the process and called on Robert Barret, shipmaster, and John Gilbert, whom two familiars of the Inquisition brought from the scaffold in front of the Judges, and the secretary read the sentence, which was that they should be burnt, and so they returned to the scaffold and were burnt.
"Then, I, Job Hortop and John Bone, were called and brought to the same place, as the others and likewise heard our sentence, which was, that we should go to the galleys there to row at the oar's end ten years and then to be brought back to the Inquisition House, to have the coat with St. Andrew's cross put on our backs and from thence to go to the everlasting prison remediless.
"I, with the rest were sent to the Galleys, where we were chained four and four together.... Hunger, thirst, cold and stripes we lacked none, till our several times expired; and after the time of twelve years, for I served two years above my sentence, I was sent back to the Inquisition House in Seville and there having put on the above mentioned coat with St. Andrew's cross, I was sent to the everlasting prison remediless, where I wore the coat four years and then, upon great suit, I had it taken off for fifty duckets, which Hernandez de Soria, treasurer of the king's mint, lent me, whom I was to serve for it as a drudge seven years." This victim, too, escaped in a fly-boat at last and reached England.