A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

Antonio Pérez was the brilliant and able favorite of Philip II, who in 1571 succeeded his patron, Ruy Gómez, Prince of Eboli, in acquiring his master’s fullest confidence and becoming the most powerful subject in Spain. In 1573, the Venitian envoy Badoero describes him as a most accomplished man, whose courtesy and attractive manners soothed the sensibilities of those provoked by the delays and penuriousness of the king, while his dexterity and ability promised soon to make him the principal minister. At the same time, he was a man of pleasure and the magnificence of his daily life was the admiration of his countrymen.[550] He found his fate in the widow of his patron, the Princess of Eboli. Sprung from the noble house of Mendoza, she was proud, vindictive and passionate, unflinching in the gratification of her desires and reckless as to the means. Whether Philip II had been her lover, and if so whether he was favored or rejected, is a disputed question, which we need not discuss; it suffices that Pérez, who had a devoted wife in Juana Coello, became enamoured of her mature charms and a slave to her imperious will.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Don John of Austria had been sent to the Netherlands on the desperate task of pacifying them, and had been left without resources. Much to the king’s displeasure, he sent, in July, 1577, his secretary, Juan de Escobedo, to Madrid to urge the necessity of supplying funds. Escobedo was thoroughly honest, but rugged and uncourtly, and the vigor of his representations increased the royal ill-humor. Pérez had for some time been secretly fanning the king’s suspicions of his half-brother’s designs, even to the point, it is said, of mistranslating cypher despatches. He represented Escobedo as an emissary sent to perfect Don Juan’s plans, including a descent upon Santander and raising Castile in revolt. Convinced that Escobedo must be put out of the way, Philip ordered Pérez to procure his death. If Pérez felt any scruple as to this, it was removed by the fact that Escobedo, who was a retainer of the house of Mendoza, discovered the relations between the princess and the favorite; he remonstrated with freedom and threatened to inform the king. His doom was sealed and, after two ineffectual attempts at poison, bravos were hired who assassinated him in the street on the night of March 31, 1578, and were rewarded with commissions in the army of Italy.

Suspicion fell on Pérez, whose fellow-secretary and bitter enemy, Mateo Vázquez, reported the rumors to the king. The princess in her wrath threatened that Vázquez should share the fate of Escobedo; the court was divided into factions which Philip vainly sought to pacify. He was bound in honor to protect his instrument, and repeatedly assured him that he was in no danger, but, whether he was beginning to realize that he had been unpardonably deceived, or was prompted by jealousy of the relations between Pérez and the princess, he at length was willing to sacrifice his secretary as an escape from a situation that was becoming impossible. Some one to replace him was required; Cardinal Granvelle, then living in retirement in Rome, was sent for; he arrived at the Escorial, July 29, 1579, and, on the preceding night Pérez and the princess were arrested in Madrid. She was carried to the castle of Pinto and was kept in strict confinement until February 1581, when she was allowed to return to her palace at Pastrana, when her extravagant freaks caused her affairs to be placed in charge of a commission, leading to her virtual imprisonment until her death, February 2, 1592.

Pérez, meanwhile, had undergone various vicissitudes of imprisonment, more or less harsh. In May, 1582, Philip ordered an investigation into the different branches of administration, directed principally against Pérez. This resulted in showing that he had habitually sold the royal favor and, in January, 1585, he was condemned to two years’ imprisonment in the castle of Turruegano, to ten years’ exile from the court, and to refund 12,224,739 maravedís, of which 7,371,098 went to the fisc and the balance to the heirs of Ruy Gómez, in restitution of presents given to him by the princess. The family of the murdered Escobedo had been vainly clamoring for justice. Philip had shrunk from being compromised in the affair, but now that Pérez was thoroughly disgraced, if the documents proving his own complicity could be secured, Pérez could safely be sacrificed to justice. His wife, Juana Coello, was imprisoned and threatened with starvation unless she would surrender his papers; she resisted heroically until a note from Pérez, which he says was written with his blood, permitted her to do so, but he had, with his usual foresight, abstracted from them in advance and placed in safety what he deemed necessary for his justification.

In the summer of 1585, Philip permitted the Escobedo kindred to commence the prosecution. Antonio Enríquez, the page of Pérez, who had arranged the assassination, gave full testimony, but the conteste, or corroboration by another witness was lacking. The affair dragged on, until, September 28, 1589, Pedro Escobedo, son of the victim, abandoned it for the sum of twenty thousand ducats and pardoned his father’s murderers. Philip’s rancor, however, had deepened with time, and the prosecution was continued. Pérez was tortured, February 22, 1590, when, at the eighth turn of the cordeles, his resolution gave way; he confessed the crime at the royal command and stated the reasons which had moved the king to order the murder. Soon after this he took to his bed and was reported to be dangerously sick; his wife, early in April, was admitted to attend him and, on the 20th, by a side-door, of which he had procured a false key and from which the bolts had been removed, he escaped at night. Friends with horses were in waiting and he took the road to Aragon. He was of Aragonese descent, so that he could claim the fueros and the court of the Justicia, which, as we have seen, sat in judgement between the sovereign and his subjects.

Aragon, at the moment, was especially excited in defence of its privileges, among which was the claim that none but an Aragonese could serve as viceroy. Philip was contesting this and had sent the Count of Almenara to conduct a suit on the question before the court of the Justicia. Almenara earned general ill-will by assuming superiority over all the local officials; the Count of Sástago, then viceroy, resisted his pretensions and was removed and replaced by Andrés Ximeno, Bishop of Teruel, a timid and irresolute man; so great became Almenara’s unpopularity that a nearly successful attempt was made to burn at night the house which he occupied; there was a spirit of turbulence abroad, peculiarly favorable to Pérez, who came to claim the protection of the fueros as a faithful servant, whom his king was endeavoring to destroy, in reward of his fidelity.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Philip’s wrath was boundless. His first impulse was to wreak vengeance on the helpless wife and children, who were thrown into prison, where they lay for nine years until after their persecutor had gone to his last account. Orders were at once despatched to seize the fugitive, dead or alive, before he should cross the Ebro, and so swift were the pursuers that they reached Calatayud, where he made his first halt, only ten hours after him. He threw himself into the Dominican convent for asylum, while his faithful friend, Gil de Mesa, who had accompanied him, hurried forward to Saragossa and claimed for him the manifestacion which secured for him the jurisdiction of the Justicia. Alonso Celdran, lieutenant of the governor, rushed to Calatayud and, after some difficulty, forcibly removed Pérez from the convent, but the veguero of the Justicia came with letters of manifestacion and obliged him to surrender his prey. Nobles and gentlemen flocked to Calatayud, and Pérez was conducted to Saragossa in a veritable triumphal procession, where he was received by the populace as though he were a king and was safely lodged in the cárcel de los manifestados. Then commenced the curious spectacle of a duel to the death between the disgraced fugitive and the whole power of the greatest monarch of Christendom, giving us an enlarged respect for the fueros of Aragon to see that the monarch was helpless until he invoked the overriding powers of the Inquisition, under the pretext that his thirst for vengeance was a matter of faith.

Had the political utility of the Inquisition been the customary expedient that has been asserted, recourse would have been had to it at once. As soon as the flight of Pérez became known, a special junta had been formed in Madrid to manage the affair, and there Juan de Gurrea, Governor of Aragon, familiar with the institutions of his native land, advised that the Inquisition be at once invoked, but there was repugnance to do this and it was resolved to rely on the regular process of law. Philip presented a formal accusation to the court of the Justicia alleging that Pérez had had Escobedo killed, falsely using the king’s name; that he had betrayed the king by divulging state secrets and altering despatches, and that he had fled. The documents were sent to Almenara, who pushed the prosecution, while Pérez endeavored to convince the king that it would be better to allow the matter to drop and permit him to live in obscurity rather than to bring the compromising documents to light, as there was no secrecy in Aragonese procedure. He wrote in this sense to Fray Diego de Chaves, the royal confessor, and he sent, by the Prior of Gotor, copies of the papers to Philip, who gave the prior two or three audiences, read the papers and then, on July 1st, published a sentence condemning Pérez to be hanged and beheaded, with confiscation. At the same time instructions were sent to Almenara to push the prosecution and to find some means to seize Pérez and convey him to Castile.