Perez now saw no safety except in flight, and had everything in readiness to force his prison, when he was betrayed some hours before, by the perfidious Juan de Basante, his false friend and accomplice.
The removal of Perez was to take place on the 24th of September; the Inquisition, the viceroy, the archbishop, the deputation of the kingdom, the municipality, and the civil and military governors, were all to assist. The inquisitors had summoned to Saragossa, from the neighbouring towns, a great number of the familiars of the holy office, and the military governor had in attendance three thousand men, well armed. This expedition was to have been made without the knowledge of the inhabitants; but the Barons de Barboles, de Biescas, and de Purroy, and some other individuals, were informed of it. At the moment when the prisoners were coming out of the prison, in the presence of the principal magistrates of the city, and while the avenues and streets through which they were to pass were lined with soldiers, a furious troop of insurgents broke through the lines, killed a great number of men, dispersed the others, put the magistrates to flight, and seizing Perez and Mayorini, carried them off in triumph, shouting, Live our liberty! Live the Fueros of Aragon! Perez and Mayorini were received into the house of the Baron de Barboles; when they had reposed for a few minutes, they were taken out of the town, and taking different roads, hastened away from it.
Perez repaired to Tauste, with the intention of crossing the Pyrenees by the valley of Ronçal, but as the frontiers were strictly guarded, he returned to Saragossa. He entered it in disguise, on the 2nd of October, and remained concealed in the house of the Baron de Biescas until the 10th of November. He then thought it dangerous to remain there longer, because Don Alphonso de Vargas was advancing with an army to take the town, and punish the rebels. This event has been related very incorrectly in several histories.
The presence of Perez in Saragossa was suspected by means of some letters from Madrid, which Basante had seen, and of which he had given information. The inquisitors searched the houses of the Baron de Barboles and several other persons. Don Antonio Morejon, the second inquisitor[71], suspected that de Biescas knew the place of his concealment, and pressed him to discover it, promising that Perez should be well treated if he presented himself voluntarily. Perez had several times declared that he would surrender to the holy office, if he was not almost certain that he should be given up to the government, which would immediately execute the sentence of death passed upon him in 1590, without allowing him to be heard. On the 11th of November, Perez went to Sallen, in the Pyrenees, on the estates of the Baron de Biescas.
On the 18th he wrote to the Princess of Bearn, to ask an asylum in the states of her brother, Henry IV., or to be permitted to pass through them to some other country. This letter was given to the princess by Gil de Mesa, an Aragonese gentleman, and an old and faithful friend of Perez.
Catherine received Perez into her brother's states on the 24th of November, when the Barons de Concas and de la Pinilla arrived at Sallen, with three hundred men, to take him; they had offered to betray him if they were pardoned: the first had been condemned by the Inquisition, for having sent horses to France, and the other was to be executed for having excited a revolt, in an attempt of the same nature.
Perez went to Pau, and while he was in that place the inquisitor Morejon again requested the Baron de Biescas to persuade him to submit to the Inquisition; he replied that he would do so, if they would promise to try him at Saragossa instead of Madrid, and that he should require that his wife and children should be set at liberty, of which they had been deprived, although they were innocent. Perez made the same reply to another requisition.
In order to satisfy the curiosity of the Princess Catherine and her subjects, Perez composed two little works, the first called Morceau Historique, sur ce qui est arrivée a Saragosse d'Aragon, le 24th Septembre, 1591; and the other, Précis du Récit des Avantures d'Antoine Perez, depuis le Commencement, de sa première Detention jusqu'a sa Sortie des Domaines du Roi Catholique. These works were printed at Pau, without the name of the author; the inquisitors examined them, and derived from them some additional charges.
Philip II. and the inquisitors offered life, offices, money, and honours, to any condemned criminal who would kill Perez or bring him as a prisoner into Spain. I refer the reader for all that relates to this part of the history to the work entitled Relations, in which Perez takes the name of Raphaël Peregrino. Perez obtained leave from Henry IV. to go to London, where he was extremely well received by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester; he afterwards went to Paris, where he passed the rest of his life, pining unceasingly for his wife and children.
On the 15th of February, 1592, the inquisitors declared Antonio Perez to be a fugitive; they affixed an edict on the metropolitan church of Saragossa, summoning him to appear within one month; this measure was most revoltingly unjust, since they well knew that Perez was in a country then at war with Spain, and the laws of the holy office allowed even the space of a year, according to the distance the accused had to travel.