History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, Vols. 1 and 2

by William Hickling Prescott

HIS LAST MOMENTS.

Attended by these three persons, the alcalde left Valladolid soon after nightfall on the evening of the fourteenth of October. Peralta had been advised of his coming; and the little company were admitted into the castle so cautiously as to attract no observation. The governor and the judge at once proceeded to Montigny's apartment, where they found the unhappy man lying on his pallet, ill not so much of the fever that was talked of, as of that sickness of the heart which springs from hope deferred. When informed of his sentence by Arellano, in words as kind as so cruel a communication would permit, he was wholly overcome by it, and for some time continued in a state of pitiable agitation. Yet one might have thought that the warnings he had already received were such as might have prepared his mind in some degree for the blow. For he seems to have been in the condition of the tenant of one of those inquisitorial cells in Venice, the walls of which, we are told, were so constructed as to approach each other gradually every day, until the wretched inmate was crushed between them. After Montigny had sufficiently recovered from his agitation to give heed to it, the sentence was read to[{387}] him by the notary. He was still to be allowed a day before the execution, in order to gain time, as Philip had said, to settle his affairs with Heaven. And although, as the alcalde added, the sentence passed on him was held by the king as a just sentence, yet, in consideration of his quality, his majesty, purely out of his benignity and clemency, was willing so far to mitigate it, in regard to the form, as to allow him to be executed, not in public, but in secret, thus saving his honor, and suggesting the idea of his having come to his end by a natural death.[1253] For this act of grace Montigny seems to have been duly grateful. How true were the motives assigned for it, the reader can determine.

Having thus discharged their painful office, Arellano and the governor withdrew, and, summoning the friar, left the prisoner to the spiritual consolations he so much needed. What followed, we have from Castillo himself. As Montigny's agitation subsided, he listened patiently to the exhortations of the good father; and when at length restored to something like his natural composure, he joined with him earnestly in prayer. He then confessed and received the sacrament, seeming desirous of employing the brief space that yet remained to him in preparation for the solemn change. At intervals, when not actually occupied with his devotions, he read the compositions of Father Luis de Granada, whose spiritualized conceptions had often solaced the hours of his captivity.

Montigny was greatly disturbed by the rumor of his having been shaken in his religious principles, and having embraced the errors of the Reformers. To correct this impression, he briefly drew up, with his own hand, a confession of faith, in which he avows as implicit a belief in all the articles sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church, and its head, the Vicar of Christ, as Pius the Fifth himself could have desired.[1254] Having thus relieved his mind, Montigny turned to settle some temporal affairs which he was desirous to settle. They did not occupy much time. For, as Philip had truly remarked, there was no occasion for him to make a will, since he had nothing to bequeath,—all his property having been confiscated to the crown.[1255] If, however, any debt pressed heavily on his conscience, he was to be allowed to indicate it, as well as any provision which he particularly desired to make for a special purpose. This was on the condition, however, that he should allude to himself as about to die a natural death.[1256]

Montigny profited by this to express the wish that masses, to the number of seven hundred, might be said for his soul, that sundry sums might be appropriated to private uses, and that some gratuities might be given to certain of his faithful followers. It may interest the reader to know that the masses were punctually performed. In regard to the pious legacies, the king wrote to Alva, he must first see if Montigny's estate would justify the appropriation;[{388}] as for the gratuities to servants, they were wholly out of the question.[1257]

One token of remembrance, which he placed in the hands of Castillo, doubtless reached its destination. This was a gold chain of delicate workmanship, with a seal or signet ring attached to it, bearing his arms. This little token he requested might be given to his wife. It had been his constant companion ever since they were married; and he wished her to wear it in memory of him,—expressing at the same time his regret that a longer life had not been granted him, to serve and honor her. As a dying injunction he besought her not to be entangled by the new doctrines, or to swerve from the faith of her ancestors.—If ever Montigny had a leaning to the doctrines of the Reformation, it could hardly have deepened into conviction; for early habit and education reasserted their power so entirely, at this solemn moment, that the Dominican by his side declared that he gave evidence of being as good and Catholic a Christian as he could wish to be himself.[1258] The few hours in which Montigny had thus tasted of the bitterness of death seemed to have done more to wean him from the vanities of life than the whole years of dreary imprisonment he had passed within the walls of Segovia and Simancas. Yet we shall hardly credit the friar's assertion, that he carried his resignation so far, that, though insisting on his own innocence, he admitted the sentence of his judges to be just![1259]

At about two o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth of October, when the interval allowed for this solemn preparation had expired, Father Castillo waited on the governor and the alcalde, to inform them that the hour had come, and that their prisoner was ready to receive them. They went, without further delay, to the chamber of death, attended by the notary and the executioner. Then, in their presence, while the notary made a record of the proceedings, the grim minister of the law did his work on his unresisting victim.[1260]

No sooner was the breath out of the body of Montigny, than the alcalde, the priest, and their two companions were on their way back to Valladolid, reaching it before dawn, so as to escape the notice of the inhabitants. All were solemnly bound to secrecy in regard to the dark act in which they had been engaged. The notary and the hangman were still further secured by the menace of death, in case they betrayed any knowledge of the matter; and they knew full well that Philip was not a man to shrink from the execution of his menaces.[1261]

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The corpse was arrayed in a Franciscan habit, which, coming up to the throat, left the face only exposed to observation. It was thus seen by Montigny's servants, who recognised the features of their master, hardly more distorted than sometimes happens from disease, when the agonies of death[{389}] have left their traces. The story went abroad that their lord had died of the fever with which he had been so violently attacked.