A Sprig of the House of Austria1
No dead and gone human visage looms so clearly through the mist of ages as that strange lymphatic face of Philip IV., which the genius of Velazquez delighted to portray from youth to age. The smooth-faced stripling in hunting dress, with his fair pink and white complexion, his lank yellow hair, and his great mumbling Austrian mouth, shows more plainly on canvas than he could have done whilst alive how weak of will and how potent of passion he was, how easily he would be led by the overbearing Count-Duke of Olivares to sacrifice all else for splendid shows and sensuous indulgence; how his vanity would be flattered by poets, painters, and players, whilst the world-wide empire of his fathers was crumbling to nothingness beneath his sway, and his vassals were being robbed of their last maravedi to pay for the frenzy of waste and prodigality with which Charles Stuart was entertained or a royal wedding celebrated. Thenceforward, through his fastuous prime, stately and splendid in his black satin and gold, to the time when, old and disappointed, with forty years of disastrous domination, the rheumy eyes drawn and haggard, but the head still erect, haughty and unapproachable in its reserve, the great painter tells the King’s story better than any pen could write it. There is something not unlovable in the shy, weak, poetic face, and one can pity the lad with such a countenance who found himself the greatest king on earth at the age of sixteen, surrounded by fawning flatterers and greedy bloodsuckers who plunged him into a vortex of dissipation before his father’s body was cold in the marble sarcophagus at the Escurial. The old man’s face, too, cold and repellent as it is, shocking as are the ravages that time and self-indulgence have stamped upon it, has yet in it an almost plaintive despair that explains those terrible broken-hearted letters in which the King, icy and undemonstrative as he was, poured out his agony and sorrow undisguised for years to the only person in the wide world he trusted, the nun Maria de Agreda.
His long reign, which saw the ruin of the Spanish power, witnessed also the most splendid epoch of Spanish art and literature, the golden age of the Spanish stage, and a wasteful prodigality of magnificence in the Court such as, with the exception of that displayed by Philip’s son-in-law, the Roi-soleil, the world has never seen equalled. The Elizabethan age in England may have approached it in literary strength, although even that cannot show such a galaxy as Lope de Vega, Calderon, Velazquez, Murillo, Tirso de Molina, Moreto, Quevedo, Guevara, Montalvan, and their host of imitators. The history of the reign has never yet been adequately or even fairly written. Isolated portions and detached incidents or personalities have been dealt with, and stray fragments now and again bring vivid pictures of the sumptuous Court before us. Spanish writers, of late years particularly, are fond of dwelling with microscopic minuteness on the incidents and adventures of the time that happened at particular spots in the capital; but the topographical-historical style, first introduced by Mesonero Romanes, and now so popular, pleasant reading as it is, does not attempt to do more than amuse by presenting romantic and detached pictures of a bygone age, and all that can be claimed by the writers is that materials are gradually being collected and brought to light by them from contemporary sources which will be invaluable to the future serious historian of the reign.
The British Museum contains many hundreds of unpublished manuscripts bearing upon the subject—copies of official documents, letters, and “relations” from Philip’s Court, petitions and statements of grievance addressed to the King, and vast collections of miscellaneous papers in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, most of which have not yet been consulted for historical purposes. Amongst a great mass of rather dry official documents of the period, most of them copies, I recently came across a small, compact group of papers, all originals, telling a curious, plaintive little story, nakedly enough, it is true, but not without a pathos of its own. There is nothing historically important in it, or in the fact that it discloses probably for the first time since it happened, but a quaint side-light is thrown by some of the documents on the way in which Court intrigue was conducted, and also, curiously enough, on the opinion of the highest authorities of those times as to the best way of bringing up a child, by which it will be seen that, allowing for difference of climate and national habits, no great change has taken place in this respect in the two centuries and a half that have passed since the papers were penned.
Philip had succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in March, 1621. He was only sixteen, and Olivares at once plunged him into such distractions as the then most dissolute capital in Europe could afford. By a strange coincidence the paper in the Museum (Egerton MSS., 329) which precedes the group of which I wish to speak is a lengthy and solemn letter, dated only a few weeks after the young King’s accession, addressed to the Count-Duke by the Archbishop of Granada, remonstrating with the all-powerful favourite for taking the boy-king out in the street at night. “People,” he says, “are gossiping about it all over Madrid, and things are being said which add little to the sovereign’s credit or dignity.” Madrid even now is fond of scandal, but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, isolated from the world as was the capital of the Spains, its one absorbing pursuit from morn till night was tittle-tattle, and the long raised walk by the side wall of the church of St. Philip, fronting the Onate palace in the Calle Mayor, was a recognised exchange for the scandal-mongers. The Archbishop says, in his bold and outspoken letter, that not only have these people begun to whisper things that were better unsaid, but the example shown by the King and his minister in scouring the streets in search of adventure is a bad one for the people at large, and he reminds Olivares of the anxiety of the late King on this very account, and his dread that his heir was already before his death being inducted into dissipation. The answer to the bold prelate’s remonstrance is just such as might be expected from the insolent favourite. He tells him in effect that he is an impertinent meddler, and ought to be ashamed, with his rank, and at his age, to trouble him with the vulgar gossip of the street. The King, he tells him, is sixteen and he (Olivares) is thirty-four, and it is not to be expected that they are to be kept in darkness as to what is done in the world. It is good that the King should see all phases of life, bad as well as good. He (Olivares) never trusts the King with any one else; and the favourite finishes his answer by a scarcely veiled threat that if the Archbishop does not mind his own business worse may befall him. No doubt the prelate took the warning, for Olivares was not scrupulous, and had a short and secret way with those who incurred his displeasure.
The small group of original papers coming after this begins with a memorandum unsigned, but evidently written by Olivares to the King some nine years subsequently, namely, early in the summer of 1630. It says that it is high time that measures should be taken at once to put a boy, whose name is not given, out of the way, as he is now four years old, and it is of great importance that he should be concealed, and all communication broken off between him and the people with whom he has been. The writer goes on to say that he has considered deeply how this is to be done, and that there are objections to be found in every solution that presents itself, but he thinks on the whole the best way will be to entrust him secretly to the care of a gentleman of his acquaintance named Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez, who lives at Salamanca. He is a person of education, has travelled all over Europe, and could bring the lad up as his own. It will be necessary to see this gentleman first, and the writer proposes to summon him to Court without telling him the reason, so that “Your Majesty” may see him and then decide for the best. Across this document is written in Philip’s uncertain, poetic hand: “It appears very necessary that something should be done in this matter and I approve of what you suggest.—P.”
Presumably Ydiaquez was sent for and approved of, as the next document in the series is of a much more formal character, being a notarial deed drawn up by the Secretary of State, Geronimo de Villanueva as prothonotary of the kingdom, who was, with the exception of Olivares, the principal confidant of Philip’s intrigues.2 This deed, dated June 1, 1631, recites that his Excellency Don Caspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of San Lucar, Grand Councillor of the Indies, Councillor of State, and Master of the Horse, delivers a boy named Francisco Fernando, aged over four years to Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez, this boy being the person referred to but not named in his Majesty’s warrant, under his sign manual, addressed to Don Juan Isassi, and countersigned and delivered to him by the Secretary of State. The deed directs that Don Juan is to bring up the boy and educate him in conformity with the instructions to be given to him by the Count-Duke, by his Majesty’s orders, and Don Juan himself undertakes in the deed to deliver up the person of the said Don Francisco Fernando when required, and to obey implicitly in all things the directions of the Count-Duke with regard to him. He promises to bring him up and rear him as he is ordered to do in the royal warrant. The deed is signed by the Count-Duke, Isassi, the King’s secretary Carnero, and two servants, and is attested in notarial form by Villanueva, as prothonotary of the kingdom.
Then comes the King’s warrant, under Philip’s own sign manual, in the fine old Spanish form:—
“The King—Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez. The Count-Duke will deliver to you a boy in whose education and virtuous bringing up you will serve me well and with absolute secrecy, following therein all the orders given to you by the Count-Duke. I, the King.”
It is clear that this Don Francisco Fernando was no ordinary babe of four to require the personal attention of all these high and mighty gentlemen in sending him to school. Philip had one child by his wife at this time, the chubby youngster Don Baltasar, who for all time will prance on his stout bay cob on the canvas of Velazquez, and only the year previous, in 1629, there had been born to the King, by the beautiful actress, Maria Calderon, the idol of the Spanish stage, a boy who in the fulness of time was to become that second great Don John of Austria, the last virile man of his race; but Don Francisco Fernando was the first-born, and apparently his mother was of far superior social rank to the jaunty “Calderona,” so that he was no doubt, baby as he was, destined for great things. The instructions given by the Count-Duke to Don Juan Isassi with regard to the care of his charge are minute to the last degree, and reflect in every line the great importance that is attached to the identification of the child. The long document begins by saying that the boy delivered to Don Juan is the illegitimate son of the King by the daughter of a gentleman, and was born in the house of his grandparents, between eleven and twelve at night, on May 15, 1626. Don Francisco Eraso, Count of Humanes, took the midwife, and was present at the birth; conveying the infant as soon as it was born to the house of Don Baltasar de Alamos y Barrientos, Councillor of the Treasury, where a nurse was awaiting him, and the child had there remained until its delivery to Don Juan. After impressing upon Don Juan the need for the most exquisite care to be taken of the child’s life and health, and arranging for the nurses and doctor who have had the care of him to accompany him to Salamanca for the first few months of the change, the Count-Duke instructs Don Juan to seek a good doctor to be kept at hand permanently, who is not to be told who the boy is unless his services are required, and in the meanwhile is to receive a good salary. “His Majesty,” says Olivares, “has confided this care to me, and I depend upon you to carry out the task.”
First of all the child was to be well taught in religion and morality; secondly, on no account was he to learn who he was, and if his attendants have already told him incautiously he is to be allowed to forget it, and “neither by word nor behaviour is he to be made to think that he is not an ordinary person;” thirdly, he is to be taught polite learning and languages, particularly Italian and French, to dance, fence, and play tennis, and, when he is a little older, to ride. He is to be treated familiarly and without ceremony, and, “in short, to be educated and brought up with the virtues and nobleness of royalty, and the study, modesty, knowledge, and temperance of a private person.” Don Juan is to send a weekly report to the Count-Duke through his secretary Carreras, but to take care that this is done with the utmost secrecy, and on no account is the child to be shown to any one without a written order. As secrecy is of the first importance 500 (ducats) a month only are ordered to be paid, besides the doctor’s fees, and Don Juan is to devise some means for the secret payment of this sum. A coach is to be secretly got ready to meet the Count-Duke and the child on the night and at the place which may be appointed for the delivery; and then, after another urgent injunction of secrecy and care of the child’s religious instruction, and a fervent prayer that God will give to the little one “all the happiness, spiritual and temporal, which He will see is necessary and good for the realm,” the proud favourite signs himself simply Caspar de Guzman.
The hidalgo of Salamanca appears to have been quite overwhelmed at the honour done him by the charge of so important a person, and his ceremonious and verbose letter of thanks to the Count-Duke needed hardly to be prefaced by the prayer that his patron will not attribute his laconic speech to the proverbial taciturnity of his countrymen, but rather to his confusion at the greatness of the honour done him by his Majesty, for which words are inadequate to express his gratitude. His only thanks can be his faithful fulfilment of orders. He begs that the doctor who has had the care of the little one may be sent to Salamanca with him in order to consult with Don Juan’s doctor, and ascertain whether he is fit to undertake so important a charge, and if not he will approach cautiously a doctor in Vitoria, named Trevino, of whom he hears good accounts. The woman who accompanies the child shall stay with him some short time, although the good hidalgo is evidently rather doubtful of this arrangement, as he adds that if she should find the horizon of their dull country life too confined for her after Madrid, or begins to kick against the discipline, other arrangements will have to be made. All care shall be taken to prevent the boy from learning who he is, and if it should get wind efforts shall be made to silence it, but the task will be a difficult one. The child shall be so reared, please God, that he shall not become abject or servile (which is most important to a royal personage), or licentious and headstrong; and the good hidalgo thereupon breaks out into a mild pedantic little joke by quoting a Latin proverb, to the effect that, to attain so great an object as this, one must be prepared to eat salt and acrid food, which, he says, will be easy for him to do, “as we all live on salt bacon and hung beef in my province.” This does not sound very promising, nor does his description of the water they have to drink, which he says is bad to drink raw, particularly in the summer, and needs cinnamon or other spice to correct it. The doctor, he says, will advise whether they had better boil it with mastic or some other drug. The correspondence shall be sent weekly through “my nephew, Don Alonso Ibarra Isassi, the eldest of the lads I took to Madrid with me. He is a good, prudent, and modest lad, and a correspondence between us as uncle and nephew will arouse no suspicion.” As for the 500 ducats a month payment, the good hidalgo says his cheeks burn with shame as he writes or even thinks about them; “but if your Excellency should deign to order them to be paid to me they might be sent without attracting notice through the treasury at Vitoria or Burgos.”
So the little child is sent to Salamanca, and with him goes the ponderously learned Dr. Cristobal Nuñez, who wraps up the simplest facts in the most complicated and pedantic technical phraseology, and, what is far more troublesome for the present purpose, writes a shockingly bad hand. His first document is a microscopic report of the constitution and temperament of the child, and the simple history of his baby ailments. The description is most curious; and, if any doubt existed as to his paternity, every trait indicates the character and appearance of a son of the sovereign race of Austria. “He is,” says the learned doctor, “of melancholic, choleric temperament, wilful and passionate, but playful when he is pleased, and respectful to those he thinks his superiors. He is of sound constitution, being the offspring of young and healthy parents; possesses superior intelligence for his age; a wonderful memory, which gives great hope if he be well trained. He is slow of speech, and expresses himself with great difficulty, stuttering and lisping; and is so backward on his feet that he has only just learnt to walk. His person is so perfect and beautiful, that the mind of a sculptor never imagined anything better; he has a lovely, fair, red and white complexion, and full grey eyes. He is grave and thoughtful—not dull or sad, but full of childish humour; quick to laugh and quick to cry. He is,” says the doctor, “high of spirit, courageous, and pugnacious, impatient of contradiction; and, if his speech be not at once understood, he flies into such ungovernable rage as to make it dangerous to thwart him, and he should rather be coaxed to obedience than forced.”
Like all his forbears, he is described as a great eater, and very fond of sweets; and it is not surprising to learn that he has all his short life suffered from over-eating and indigestion, and for long past has had quartan ague. The drastic remedies of the times were endured by the child, the doctor says, “without weeping, as if he knew they were for his good”; but the learned medico confesses that all his own prescriptions had done the babe less good than what he describes as an old wife’s remedy of anointing the stomach and spine with ointment and saffron.
The child’s usual mode of life is carefully described. Between eight and nine in the morning he had a fowl’s liver and a little loaf, or else some bread or cake sopped in broth, or bread and jam and a cup of water. At twelve o’clock broth with sippets of bread or half of the breast of a fowl, or sometimes some forcemeat balls, as he likes a change, and demands it. When he gets tired of this he may have a little loin of mutton or the leg of a fowl. He is also very fond of a piece of bacon between two slices of bread, and of quince marmalade, jams, and sweets. At five o’clock he “packs his wallet,” as the doctor calls it, by a meal of bread and jam, and a cup of water. He is put to bed at nine o’clock, and sleeps with his nurse. The learned Don Cristobal then enters into a most verbose disquisition as to the fitness of the locality chosen for the temperament of the child, and arrives at the conclusion that the choice has been a wise one, although the roundabout method of argument founded on wise talk about blood and humours and vapours and the like seems rather beside the mark to a modern reader. The sum of it all is, however, that Don Juan de Isassi’s house stands healthily, if somewhat bleakly, on high ground about three bow-shots from the town, and joining the great convent of the Suceso, the house itself being a good one, surrounded by its own grounds.
Thus far the doctor has only spoken of the constitution and past management of his late charge; but the next document, which bears the same date as the preceding one (June 18, 1630), lays down an elaborate plan for the future rearing of the child. He recommends that he should be allowed to play after his early supper, and not be sent to sleep before nine at night, unless he feels sleepy. He is to be woke at eight, if he is not already awake, and is to be given his light breakfast of a fowl’s liver and cake, a rasher of bacon and bread and broth, or a roasted egg. At eleven or twelve he is to dine on forcemeat balls, made of two parts chicken, one part mutton, and one part bacon, with a little pie or broth with sippets. Sometimes, instead of force-meat balls, he may have the leg of a fowl, which, if he likes it, will be enough for him, with a little bread soaked in broth, or he may have a mouthful of mutton with chicken broth. It will be well, says the courtly doctor, that the gentleman himself should be consulted occasionally as to whether he preferred the fowl or the sausages, or roast or boiled food. He is to sleep about an hour and a half after dinner, and play in the afternoon; but great care must be taken to keep him out of the sun, and his early supper may be as heretofore, only somewhat later; a biscuit or two with jam, a small egg, such as the fowls of the province lay, or sippets in broth. A curious and somewhat elaborate little dish is recommended for occasional breakfast or supper. “Take,” says the doctor, “a half-dozen almonds or melon seeds, and press the juice from them, which mix with a little barley-cream and some good broth. This must be boiled, and sugar and sponge-cake worked into it until it is a smooth paste, which may be served with half a beaten egg over it, and will make a nice light supper.” It will be good to excite the appetite by variety, and as the child gets older he may sometimes be given coarser food, and trout or other fresh fish. He must drink fresh spring water boiled with viper-grass, or mixed with cinnamon, according to the weather. He is always to have some fruit for dessert, unless it disagrees with him; but much care must be taken to guard him from excess; and he is to be specially sparing in drinking. Full common-sense directions are given with regard to his dress, and if he needs medicine his food must be reduced by one half, and a decoction of mallow and camomile, honey and oil administered. Red Alexandria honey is also recommended, quinces, oil of wormwood, and a variety of other remedies for simple ailments.
There is yet another document from the doctor giving some further rules, apparently in answer to special questions. In it he again learnedly describes the child’s constitution, his weak stomach and aptness to catch cold, inherited from his parents, his tendency to hydrocephalus, and his almost continuous series of ailments since he was born, which, says the medico, would have killed him but for his strong constitution. From seven years old he was to eat fish and other Lenten fare, and at twelve years must be taught to fast. Above all, he is not to be brought up delicately or coddled, but encouraged to run and romp. Great care must be taken that he is not exposed to the cold, but he must be well wrapped up even in summer. Drugs are to be given sparingly, if at all: mallow, camomile, sweet almonds, black sugar or honey if wanted; but he is not to be constantly dosed with red honey and other things as children usually are, and if he is really ill he is not to be lowered or bled much; by which it will be seen that Dr. Cristobal Nuñez, pedantic as he was, differed somewhat from the usual type of sangrados of the time. All this was between the 1st and 18th of June, 1630, and it is to be supposed that the poor babe of the house of Austria lived his little life in and around the “Casa Solariega” of the Salamancan hidalgo for the next few years, although no record remains of it here.
The next document of the series is a letter, elated nearly four years afterwards, March 17, 1634, from the Secretary of State, Geronimo Villanueva, to Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez, saying that his Majesty had received with the deepest grief the news of the death of Don Francisco Fernando, who showed such bright promise for his tender years, and his Majesty highly appreciates all the care that has been taken of his education. The body is to be brought with the utmost secrecy in a coach to the royal monastery of St. Lorenzo (the Escurial), where it is to be buried, and advice is to be sent by confidential special messenger to Madrid when the corpse should arrive, in order that one of the King’s stewards may be there to receive it. All the other arrangements for the burial are made. The four years had apparently not been unprofitable ones to the hidalgo, as the next time his name appears he is a knight of Santiago and lord of the town of Ameyo, as well as of the castles of Isassi and Orbea. The date of the document is April 15, 1634, and again it is a notarial deed attested by the prothonotary of the kingdom, Don Geronimo Villanueva, setting forth that Don Juan Isassi Ydiaquez delivered the body of Don Francisco Fernando, son of his Catholic Majesty Philip IV., whom God had taken to himself, to the Marquis of Torres, the Bishop of Avila, and other nobles appointed by the King to receive it. The delivery was made in the porch of the cathedral, and we are told that the corpse was dressed in a red gown, bordered with gold, and lay in a coffin of black velvet. The coffin, which had been borne by Don Juan Isassi and his servant to the porch, was thence carried to the great hall of the monastery by certain of the King’s gentlemen-in-waiting, and after the religious ceremonies had been performed, was taken to the vault by the monks of the Order and laid to rest. And so ended a little life which, like that of his half-brother Baltasar, if it had been spared, might have stayed the decay of the Spanish branch of the House of Austria. It is true that Don John of Austria survived, and for a short time snatched his poor brother, Charles the Bewitched, from the clutches of his foolish mother and her low-born favourite, Valenzuela, but who knows whether the strong, masterful spirit of the baby of four whom it was dangerous to thwart might not, if he had grown to manhood, have done more than his younger brother to keep the reins of power when once he grasped them. Poor trembling, white-faced Charles the Bewitched, with his leaden eyes and monstrous projecting jaw, a senile dodderer at thirty, wanted a strong, masterful spirit like this to hold him up and shield him from the vultures that fought over the carcase before the poor creature was dead.
But it was not to be, and the forgotten babe of the sovereign house was put with so many other princely corpses in that horrible “rotting place of princes,” off the black marble stair of the regal pantheon of the Escurial, where, not so very many years ago, I saw a ghastly heap of princely and semi-princely skulls and leg-bones gathered up as they had fallen from the rotting coffins to the floor. There, all undistinguished from the others, probably enough rests still, his very name never published, and his short existence hardly known till now, Don Francis Ferdinand of Austria, one of the last male members of the Spanish branch of the sovereign house, which in four generations descended from the highest pinnacle of human greatness to contempt, disgrace, decrepitude and decay.
Notes
1 The Gentleman’s Magazine, September, 1892.
2 He was with difficulty rescued from the direst vengeance of the Inquisition a few years afterwards in consequence of his too ready co-operation in the King’s amorous tendencies. Don Geronimo was patron of the convent of San Placido, next door to his own house in the Calle de la Madera in Madrid, and had inflamed the King’s mind with stories of a very beautiful nun who was an inmate of the convent. Philip and his favourite, the Count-Duke, insisted upon seeing this paragon of loveliness, and Don Geronimo, exerting his authority as patron, procured them entrance in disguise to the parlour, where, as was to be expected, his Catholic Majesty fell violently in love with the beautiful nun. The interviews in the parlour were constant but, with the grating between the King and his flame, unsatisfactory, and, by dint of bribes and threats, Don Geronimo managed to break a passage from the cellars of his own house into the vaults of the convent, by means of which, notwithstanding the prayers, the entreaties, and appeals of the abbess, the King was introduced into the cell of the unfortunate nun of whom he was enamoured. He found her laid out as if she were a corpse, surrounded with lighted tapers, with a great crucifix by her side, but not even this availed, and the sacrilegious amours continued so long that the news reached the ever-open ears of the Holy Office. The Grand Inquisitor, a Dominican friar called Antonio de Sotomayor, Archbishop of Damascus, privately took the King to task, and obtained a promise that the offence should cease. Don Geronimo was seized by the officers of the Inquisition (August 30, 1644), and taken to Toledo, where he was accused of sacrilege and other heinous crimes against the faith. The evidence was full and conclusive, and Don Geronimo’s life was trembling in the balance, when the Count-Duke boldly went to the Grand Inquisitor one night with two signed royal decrees in his hands, one giving the Archbishop 12,000 ducats a year for life on condition of his resignation of the Grand Inquisitorship, and the other depriving him of all his temporalities, and banishing him for ever from all the dominions of his Catholic Majesty. The Grand Inquisitor naturally chose the former, and resigned next morning. Pressure was put on Pope Urban VIII. by the Spanish Ambassador, and very shortly an order arrived from Rome that the whole of the documents and evidence in the case were to be sealed up and sent in a box by a messenger of the Holy Office to his Holiness himself for decision. The messenger chosen was one of the Inquisition notaries called Alfonso Paredes. The Count-Duke, under various pretexts, delayed this man’s departure for some weeks, and in the meanwhile had good portraits of him painted and sent by special messengers to all the ports in Italy where he was likely to land, and orders were sent to the Spanish agents to capture him at all risks. On the night of his arrival at Genoa, by the connivance of the authorities, he was seized, gagged, and carried off to Naples, where he was imprisoned for the rest of his life, condemned to perpetual silence on pain of instant death. The box of papers that he bore was sent privately to the King, who, with Olivares, burnt the contents without even opening the packet. The new Grand Inquisitor, who was a creature of the Queen, a Benedictine monk named Diego de Arce, was not to be entirely balked, and although no evidence now existed, he had the prothonotary Don Geronimo Villanueva brought from his prison in Toledo, where he had languished for two years, and placed before the tribunal of the Inquisition. He was stripped of his arms, accoutrements, insignia of rank and outer clothing, and sat upon a plain low wooden stool, and then, without any evidence being given or statement of specific offence, was condemned for irreligion, sacrilege, superstition, and other enormities, and, by the mercy of the Holy Office, was absolved from all this on condition that he fasted every Friday for a year, never again entered the convent, and gave 2,000 ducats to the poor through the monks of Atocha.