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Updated: June 24, 2025
Philip's rage against Don John was accordingly turned to account, and Perez received the King's secret orders to procure Escovedo's assassination. The details of the murder were arranged and executed by Perez, but it must be confessed in justice to Philip, with much inferior nicety to that of his, own performances in the same field. Many persons were privy to the plot.
The dinner over, secretary Escovedo went away, but the others remained to play, and Antonio Perez having gone out for a moment, rejoined his major-domo and me in one of the apartments over the court-yard, where we gave him an account of the quantity of water that had been poured into secretary Escovedo's glass; after which, he returned to play.
And thus it was determined; thus was Don John suckled on the windy pap of hope when presently he came to Court with Escovedo at his heels. Distended by that empty fare he went off to the Low Countries, leaving Escovedo in Madrid to represent him, with secret instructions to advance his plans. Now Escovedo's talents were far inferior to my conception of them.
That dispatch from Rome so cunningly and secretly contrived in cipher had yet contained no warning that Escovedo's share in this should be concealed. There are none so imprudent as the sly. I sought the King at once, and told him all that I had learnt. He was aghast. Indeed, I never saw him more near to anger. For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath or any other emotion.
Out of these shreds and patches the plot against England, the Pope's bull, the desire expressed by Don John to march into France as a simple adventurer, with a few thousand men at his back Perez, according to his own statement, drew up a protocol, afterwards formally approved by Philip, which concluded with the necessity of taking Escovedo's life, instantly but privately, and by poison.
Yet the excellent pair of conspirators at Madrid could wring no damning proofs from the lips of the supposititious conspirators in Flanders, save that Don John, after Escovedo's arrival in Madrid, wrote, impatiently and frequently, to demand that he should be sent back, together with the money which he had gone to Spain to procure.
A third solution is possible: Philip, perhaps, wished to murder Escovedo for political reasons, and without reference to the tender passion; but Philip was slow and irresolute, while Perez, who dreaded Escovedo's interference with his love affair, urged his royal master on to the crime which he was shirking.
Moreover, the horrible news of Escovedo's assassination had sickened him to the soul. The deed had flashed a sudden light into the abyss of dark duplicity in which his own fate was suspended. His most intimate and confidential friend had been murdered by royal command, while he was himself abandoned by Philip, exposed to insult, left destitute of defence.
The reward of fidelity, as in poor Escovedo's case, was oftener the stiletto. Was it astonishing that murder was more common than fidelity? With the subsequent career of Antonio Perez his famous process, his banishment, his intrigues, his innuendos, his long exile, and his miserable death, this history has no concern. We return from our brief digression.
The reward of fidelity, as in poor Escovedo's case, was oftener the stiletto. Was it astonishing that murder was more common than fidelity? With the subsequent career of Antonio Perez his famous process, his banishment, his intrigues, his innuendos, his long exile, and his miserable death, this history has no concern. We return from our brief digression.
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