And on the 30th of September the following:
“In as much as the Excellent Sr. D. Pedro P. Roxas, honorary councillor of the Administration has been found under process in the courts of law, for rebellion; in the use of my faculties, etc., etc.”
Moises Salvador y Francisco testified (fols. 1138–1143) that “among the persons who sympathised with the cause and who aided it with their means for its realization, he remembered D. Pedro Roxas and D. Francisco Roxas ... (and others); and there existed in the provinces others whose names he could not remember.”
Domingo Franco y Tuason testified on the 30th of September 1896 (fols. 1332–1337) that “in another of the several interviews he had with Francisco L. Roxas, he asked him if in the circle of his relations (with the association) he counted with persons who had offered to aid the objects and ends of the Liga. Sr. Roxas replied: Yes. And in proof thereof he drew from a drawer in his desk a record which he read, and among the names he read the witness remembered those of don P. Roxas and others.”
When Francisco Roxas found himself in danger of arrest, he attempted to flee to Hong-Kong, but was captured on board the ship which was to carry him there. From the ship he was conducted under arrest to the Comendancia of the Veterana where he remained several days, at the end of which he was transferred to the Fort of Santiago.
Francisco was a millionaire who had received from Spain a name and reputation superior to his personal merits, and yet in spite of all that the mother-country had done for him in raising him up to a position to which he could never have attained without her aid, he was found to have placed himself in the vanguard of the bitterest enemies of his country. He was the director of the workings of separatism and was the chief provider of arms for the revolt, as was testified by innumerable witnesses.[30]
On the eve of his execution for treason Francisco penned the following abjuration:
“I, Francisco L. Roxas, on the eve of my death, in reparation for what in my words and actions may have offended my neighbor; for warning of others of my person and in order to satisfy my conscience, to the end that no one, and especially my children, fall into the net of freemasonry, or of any other secret society, all of which I detest and curse, and be not in a day to come ungrateful sons of our Mother Spain, beg pardon for all my faults and bad example.”
“I die in the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic faith in which I was born and educated in a christian manner. I admit all that she admits and condemn all that she condemns.”
“This I sign with my own hand with entire liberty.”