“But inasmuch as we are now occupied with other and arduous matters, and therefore may not personally acquaint ourselves with the said cases or with any one of them, trusting in the legality, learning, experience, and sound conscience of you, the said Reverend Father Inquisitors and of each of you, and that you are such persons as will well and faithfully discharge what we entrust to you by these presents we commit to you, the said Reverend Father Inquisitors, and to each of you, in solidum, the said proceedings against and trials of the aforementioned and of any of them, whether they may have been participators or accessories before or after the fact of the said crimes and offences in any way committed against our Holy Catholic Faith, and likewise of the abettors, counsellors, defenders, concealers, those who had knowledge of the facts and offenders of whatsoever degree, to the end that concerning them you may receive and obtain any information from any part of the said Kingdoms, and seize and examine any witness, and inquire, learn, proceed, imprison, sentence, and abandon to the secular arm such as you may find guilty, absolve and liberate those without guilt, and do concerning them all things and any thing that we ourselves should do being present....
“And by these presents we order the Father Inquisitors of the City of Segovia and each and any of them in whose power are the said prisoners to deliver them immediately in safe custody to you.
“Given in the Monastery of St. Thomas of the said Order of Preachers, which is beyond and near the walls of the said City of Avila.”[175]
At what stage of the affair the four brothers Franco of La Guardia—Alonso, Lope, Garcia, and Juan—had been arrested, and upon whose information, we do not know. But we do know—for the dossier of Yucé’s trial is complete—that they were not betrayed by Yucé.
That their names had been divulged is a confirmation of the surmise that the examinations of Ocaña, or Ça Franco, or even Benito Garcia, had already yielded further information on the subject of the affair of La Guardia.
It must be understood that the record of any examination of these prisoners in which the name of Yucé Franco was not mentioned would find no place in the dossier of the latter’s trial.
The four Francos of La Guardia were brothers, as we have said; but they were nowise related to the Francos of Tenbleque—Ça and Yucé. They were dealers in cereals—possibly millers—as we shall see, and they owned a number of carts which they appear to have further employed in a carrier’s business. They were baptized Jews, as is already made clear in Torquemada’s letter by the fact that he does not describe them—as he does the others—as Jews.
All concerned in the affair, with the exception of one Ribera, who does not at present enter into consideration, were men drawn from a humble class of life—a class which through ignorance has always been credulous and prone to belief in sorcery and enchantments.
A curious circumstance is the omission in Torquemada’s letter of all mention of the octogenarian Ça Franco, whom we know to have been already under arrest.