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Nay, the Duke of Medina Sidonia had already engaged Mount-Edgecombe for himself, as the fairest jewel of the south; which when good old Sir Richard Edgecombe heard, he observed quietly, that in 1555 he had the pleasure of receiving at his table at one time the admirals of England, Spain, and the Netherlands, and therefore had experience in entertaining Dons; and made preparations for the visit by filling his cellars with gunpowder, with a view to a house-warming and feu-de-joie on the occasion.
Displaying from the first a studious and religious bent, he soon acquired a reputation for learning and sanctity. Making the Meccan pilgrimage while still a young man, he studied at Medina and travelled as far as Persia, returning ultimately to the Nejd. He returned burning with holy wrath at what he had seen, and determined to preach a puritan reformation.
It was this early accession to the faith, and this timely aid proffered and subsequently afforded to Mahomet and his disciples, which procured for the Moslems of Medina the appellation of Ansarians, or auxiliaries, by which they were afterward distinguished.
The Duke of Medina Sidonia had driven him from captured Alhama. He owed this mighty noble a grudge, and the opportunity to repay it seemed at hand. The duke had led his forces to the aid of King Ferdinand, who was making a foray into Moorish territory.
The reflex of the expectancy in the hearts of the Muslim may be traced in his messages to them. Their whole world, as it were, waited breathless, quiet, and tense for the record of the year's achievements in Medina, and for the time appointed by God.
The duke of Medina Sidonia would have appeared, to many, the very last person to whom to apply for aid of the marques of Cadiz; but the marchioness judged of him by the standard of her own high and generous mind.
The number of his enemies within the city was considerably reduced. He was gradually proving his power by breaking up the Jewish federations, and thereby advancing far towards his goal, his unassailable, almost royal dominance of Medina. Moreover, he bound the refugees closer to him by dividing the despoiled country amongst them.
Muhammed, the preacher of repentance, had become a temporal prince in Medina; his civil and political administration was ecclesiastical in character, an inevitable result of his position as the apostle of God, whose congregation was at the same time a state.
Mancio, whose pupil Luis de Leon had once been at Alcalá, was a Dominican; hence he would be suspect perhaps doubly 'suspect' in the prisoner's eyes. Medina, also a Dominican, was an overt foe; Cáncer, of whom Luis de Leon knew nothing except that he was a professor at Salamanca, proved to be not over friendly.
His testimony, such as it is, has less intellectual substance than the testimony of Castro and Medina; it turns mainly on petty personal questions or on points of morbid scrupulousness. The more closely his evidence is scrutinized, the more difficult is it to avoid the suspicion that Zúñiga was not a perfectly trustworthy witness.
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