There being no justice in the land, the inhabitants and colonists suffered many wrongs from the officers and magistrates appointed by the insurgents. They were imprisoned and deprived of their property; at least fifty of them became so indignant that they retreated into the interior towards the coast of Brazil, with the intention of finding means of proceeding to Spain and informing His Majesty of all the wrongs, misdeeds, and disturbances passing in the land. Many others were overtaken and kept in prison a long time; their arms and all their possessions were taken away and distributed among their friends and partisans, in order to engage their support for the party in power.
[CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-NINTH.]
How the monks left the country.
WHILE this sad state of things was going on without hope of remedy, the monks—friar Bernardo de Armenta[359] thinking the moment opportune for putting into execution their long-conceived project of departing (having already attempted it, as I have said before), spoke about it to the officers and to Domingo de Irala, in order that they should give them permission and the necessary help to reach the coast of Brazil. These officers consented, in order to give them satisfaction because they had opposed the governor, who had hindered their taking the route they wished. Permission was accordingly granted to them, and the necessary help to go to Brazil. They took with them some Spaniards and Indian women, to whom they were teaching Christianity.
[359] The name of the other monk is omitted in the text. It was probably Alonzo Lebron; cf. supra, pp. [100], [136].
During his captivity the governor had asked the insurgents several times to let him appoint a deputy to rule the province in the name of His Majesty, in order to terminate the tumults and disorders that were of such constant occurrence, and restore justice and tranquillity in the land. After making this nomination he would have liked to go before the king and render an account of all that had passed, and the actual position of affairs. The officers answered, however, that by his arrest his authority had lost all its force, and that the person they had nominated as governor would serve the purpose. Every day they entered his prison and threatened to put an end to his life. The governor replied that, should they decide upon doing this, he begged, and even if necessary he required, them in God’s name and the king’s to send him a clergyman to confess him. They said that if they gave him a confessor it would be Francisco de Andrada, or another native of Biscay (who were concerned in the insurrection), and if he would have neither of them, he should have none at all, because the others were their enemies and his supporters. In fact, they had arrested Antonio d’Escalera, Rodrigo de Herrera, and Luis de Miranda, because they had said, and were still saying, that the arrest of the governor was a great sin, and contrary to the service of God and His Majesty, and would bring ruin upon the land. The priest, Luis de Miranda, had been imprisoned with the Alcalde mayor for more than eight months without seeing sun or moon all that time. And the insurgents would never consent that any other of the clergy except those we have named should confess him.
A gentleman[360] named Anton Bravo, eighteen years of age, having been heard to say one day that he would form a scheme to release the governor from prison, the officers and Domingo de Irala had him arrested, and applied the torture to him, to find pretext for punishing and ill-treating others whom they hated. They offered him his liberty if he would incriminate others whom he had named in his evidence. These were all taken and disarmed. Anton Bravo was publicly bastinadoed in the street, proclaimed a traitor, and accused of being unfaithful to His Majesty by trying to deliver the governor from prison.
[360] In original, hidalgo, from hijo de algo, i.e., a person of good birth.