The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence

by Martin A. S. Hume

An execution

In September, a great Aragonese noble of turbulent antecedents, the Duke of Hijar, with three other nobles of rank, were suddenly seized and committed to prison in Madrid. The accusation against them was that they had plotted against the crown: some said in favour of the King of Portugal, others in favour of France; but the King specially assured the nun that there had not been discovered any design against his life. The Duke, as soon as he was arrested, endeavoured to implicate Sor Maria in the plot, and produced a letter from her to him. In a note in her own hand on the King's account written to her of the execution of the prisoners in December, she explains the matter. Hijar, it appears, had written to her hinting at some plan against the Government being in contemplation, and asking her advice. She had replied deploring such wickedness, and had referred him to the King. The nun says that many had been the attempts to bring her into trouble about it; but that in all his letters to her referring to the plot the King had never even mentioned her connection with the matter, which showed that he, at least, did not believe that she was culpably concerned. The King, indeed, in his letters rather makes light of the affair, as being "the most foolish conspiracy ever conceived," and he evidently did not think that the Duke of Hijar was the prime mover in the affair; as repeated torture having failed to wring any incriminatory admissions from the Duke, the judges sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment only, though we are told that the torture had made him a cripple for life, both hand and foot. One of the other conspirators died of a fit in the prison soon after the death sentence was passed, his fate, as Philip wrote to the nun, being worst of all, since he had died unabsolved.

The "Hijar conspirators"

The public execution in the Plaza Mayor of the two principal conspirators, both nobles, Don Pedro de Silva, Marquis de la Vega de Sagra, and Don Carlos de Padilla, moved excitement-loving Madrid profoundly, and several eye-witnesses of the scene have left their impressions of it. From one unpublished account in the British Museum[[28]] the following description is condensed as an example of a Spanish execution, of the first importance at the time.

Shortly before noon, on Saturday, the 5th December 1648, the massive doors of the Carcel de la Corte, opposite the Plaza de Santa Cruz, near the Atocha entrance of the Plaza Mayor,[[29]] opened for a sombre procession to issue therefrom. First came seventy alguacils of the Court; then followed, amidst tapers and swinging censers, two famous figures of Christ from the parish church of Santa Cruz opposite, with the attendant clergy. Then came a saddle mule covered to the ground with housings of black baize, and led by an executioner. Upon the mule sat Don Carlos de Padilla, who only on the previous day had been divested of his honourable habit of a Knight of Santiago. Now, as he rode disconsolate, a crucifix in his hand and closely surrounded by many Jesuit fathers, he wore a long gown of black baize, with a cap of the same, and a steel chain dangled from his right foot. It was noticed, too, that instead of the almost universal golilla he wore a white starched Walloon collar unblued.

After him came on another draped mule the Marquis, Don Pedro, similarly garbed; but, instead of the collar, wearing the tippet of a Fellow of the College, of Cuenca at Salamanca. Following the condemned men came crowds of alguacils, notaries, and officers of justice; and as the procession swept along dismally, heralded by tolling bells and the dreary call of the criers for the people to pray for the souls of the departing, vast crowds stood at every coign of vantage, and were held back at the end of each side street by guards and alguacils. The procession did not enter the Plaza by the nearest gate, that of the Atocha, but debouched into the Calle Mayor, in order to enter the Plaza by a principal, Guadalajara, portal. It was noticed that as Don Carlos Padilla reached the entrance by the Guadalajara gate his face lit up radiantly, and the word passed along the awestruck crowd that a heavenly vision had brought comfort to him, now that all earthly comfort had fled.

The Plaza Mayor itself had been cleared of all its fruit stalls, as if for a bull-fight; and in the centre (where now stands the statue of Philip III.) was erected a scaffold, upon which were two uncovered chairs side by side. Don Carlos de Padilla ascended first the fatal stair, and, taking his seat upon the left-hand chair with much serenity, slowly arranged his long gown decorously, whilst the swarm of priests and friars around him continued their sacred ministrations. The doomed noble's hands and feet were firmly bound to the chair, and a strip of black baize blinded his eyes. Then the executioner, stepping forward, with a large butcher's knife slashed the throat across again and again. It was remarked that Don Carlos, being a robust man, shed an immense quantity of blood. Then going behind him, the executioner with several heavy blows on the nape of the neck severed the head entirely, and the deed was finished.

Then came the turn of the Marquis, Don Pedro de Silva, to mount; and as he reached the top his eyes perforce rested upon the dead body of his comrade, still bound to the chair. "Blessed be the name of the Lord," he exclaimed in horror at the ghastly sight, as he took his seat on the adjoining chair. The strip of baize that had bound the eyes of Don Carlos was too much soaked with blood to be used for the second time, and another had to be brought; Don Pedro devoutly repeating the Creed in the meanwhile. It was noticed that Don Pedro, being a dry, shrunken little man, shed but little blood; and when his head at last was severed from the back, as that of Don Carlos had been, the King's justice was satisfied. The bodies remained in the chairs all that day; but at one o'clock in the morning the executioner and the widows shrouded the bodies by the light of two candle-ends, and enclosed them in rough coffins, in which they were carried in procession, with the parish cross and eight wax tapers before them, across the Calle Mayor to the churchyard of St. Gines for burial. The two Christs of Santa Cruz went with them too, though the clergy were not allowed to accompany them; for they had claimed the right of burying the bodies in their own church, which is the parish in which the prison is situated, and the King had ordered the sepulchre at St. Gines.

The King had taken no part in the trial of the prisoners, and had strictly enjoined the five judges specially appointed to investigate the case to be absolutely impartial, though the nun herself had almost violently urged that no mercy should be shown against men who aimed at overturning the Government. The real object of the conspiracy appears to have been the overthrow of Don Luis de Haro, and the adoption of a conciliatory policy which would end the warfare in Catalonia and Portugal, even at the cost of a sacrifice of pride and territory to Spain.

Already, when the impressive sight just described was passing in Madrid, the new girl Queen-Consort was slowly, very slowly, making her way from city to city of her father's dominions, Tyrol, Hungary, and Italy, on her way to the expectant arms of her elderly avuncular bridegroom. Festivities and celebrations greeted her in every town she entered, and everywhere the inexperienced girl enjoyed her new importance without restraint. At Trent, Philip's representatives met her, and thenceforward she travelled as Queen of Spain, staying on her way for many weeks at each place.[[30]] The reasons for so long a delay were several. First, money was scarce for the conveyance of the tremendous company of 160 Spanish nobles with their households who accompanied the Queen; secondly, the plague was raging throughout eastern Spain, where she had to land; and thirdly, she herself was as yet quite immature, being barely fifteen.