“There is always collusion in these cases.”
—Andrew Lang

Juan de Escovedo, Secretary of King Philip’s famous natural brother, Don John of Austria had been murdered, and the ‘first murderer’ as Shakespeare says, Antonio Perez, had both been trained in the service of Ruy Gomez, Philip’s famous Minister, whose wife, Ana de Mendoza, being born in 1546, was aged thirty-two, when Escovedo was killed. This woman was blind in one eye in 1578, but probably both her eyes were brilliant in 1567, when she really seems to have been King Philip’s mistress, or was generally believed so to be. Eleven years later, at the date of the murder, in 1578, there is no obvious reason to suppose that Philip was constant to her charms. Her husband, created Prince d’Eboli, had died in 1573; 1 the Princess was now a widow, and really, if she chose to distinguish her husband’s old Secretary, at this date the King’s Secretary, Antonio Perez, there seems no reason to suppose that Philip would have troubled himself about the matter. That he still loved her with constancy far from royal; that she loved Perez; that Perez and she feared that Escovedo would denounce them to the King, is Mignet’s theory of the efficient cause of Escovedo’s murder. Yet Mignet holds, and rightly, that Philip had made up his mind, as far as he ever did make up his mind, to kill Escovedo, long before that diplomatist became an inconvenient spy on the supposed lovers.

Perez was said to be the natural son of his late employer, Gomez, the husband of his alleged mistress. Probably Perez was nothing of the sort: he was the bastard of a man of his own name, and his alleged mistress, the widow of Gomez, may even have circulated the other story to prove that her relations with Perez, though intimate, were innocent.

As for Escovedo, he and Perez had been friends from their youth upwards. While Perez passed from the service of Gomez to that of Philip, in 1572, Escovedo was appointed Secretary to the nobly adventurous Don John of Austria. The Court believed that he was intended to play the part of spy on Don John, but he fell under the charm of that gallant heart, and readily accepted if he did not inspire, the most daring projects of the victor of Lepanto, the Sword of Christendom. This was very inconvenient for the leaden-footed Philip, who never took time by the forelock, but always brooded over schemes and let opportunity pass.

Don John, on the other hand, was all for forcing the game, and, when he was sent to temporize and conciliate in the Low Countries, and withdraw the Spanish army of occupation, his idea was to send the Spanish forces out of The Netherlands by sea. When once they were on blue water he would make a descent on England; rescue the captive Mary Stuart; marry her; restore the Catholic religion, and wear the English crown. A good plot approved of by the Pope, but a plot which did not suit the genius of Philip.

At this time, 1577, Perez, though a gambler and a profligate, who took presents from all hands, must have meant nothing worse, on Miornet’s theory, than to serve Philip as he loved to be served, and keep him well informed of Don John’s designs. Escovedo was not yet, according to Mignet, an obstacle to the amours of Perez and the King’s mistress, the Princess d’Eboli. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, on the other hand, holds that the object of Perez already was to ruin Don John; for what reason Sir William owns that he cannot discover. Indeed Perez had no such object, unless Don John confided to him projects treasonous or dangerous to the Government of his own master, the King.

Escovedo reached Spain in July 1577. He was not killed till March 31, 1578, though attempts on his life were made some weeks earlier. Mignet argues that, till the early spring of 1578, Philip held his hand because Perez lulled his fears; that Escovedo then began to threaten to disclose the love affair of Perez to his royal rival, and that Perez, in his own private interest, now changed his tune, and, in place of mollifying Philip, urged him to the crime. But Philip was so dilatory that he could not even commit a murder with decent promptitude. Escovedo was not dangerous, even to his mind, while he was apart from Don John. But as weeks passed, Don John kept insisting, by letter, on the return of Escovedo, and for that reason, possibly, Philip screwed his courage to the (literally) sticking point and Escovedo was stuck. Major Martin Hume, however, argues that, by this time, circumstances had changed, and Philip had now no motive for murder.

When the Ruthvens were killed at Perth, on August 5, 1600, 2 in an affair the most mysterious of all mysteries, the Rev. Robert Bruce, a stern Presbyterian, refused to believe that James I., had not planned their slaughter.

“But your Majesty might have secret reasons,”

said Bruce to the King, who, naturally and truly, maintained his own innocence. This looks as if Mr. Bruce, like the confessor of Philip, held that a King had a right to murder a subject for secret reasons of State. The Inquisition vigorously repudiated the doctrine, when maintained by a Spanish preacher, but Knox approved of King Henry’s (Darnley’s) murder of Riccio.
Perez, having been commissioned to organize the crime, handed on the job to Martinez, his steward. Martinez asked a ruffian page, Enriquez,

“if I knew anybody in my country [Murcia] who would stick a knife into a person.”

Enriquez said,

“I will speak about it to a muleteer of my acquaintance, as, in fact, I did, and the muleteer undertook the business. But later, hearing that a man of importance was to be knifed, Enriquez told Perez that a muleteer was not noble enough: the job must be entrusted to persons of more consideration.”

Enriquez, in 1585, confessed for a good reason; Perez had absurdly mismanaged the business. All sorts of people were employed, and, after the murder, they fled, and began to die punctually in an alarming manner. Naturally Enriquez thought that Perez was acting like the Mures of Auchendrane, who dispatched a series of witnesses and accomplices in their murder of Kennedy.

As they always needed a new accomplice to kill the previous accomplice, then another to slay the slayer, and so on, the Mures if unchecked would have depopulated Scotland. Enriquez surmised that his turn to die would soon come; so he confessed, and was corroborated by Diego Martinez. Thus the facts came out, and this ought to be a lesson to murderers.

Martinez sent Enriquez to Murcia, to gather certain poisonous herbs, and these were distilled by a venal apothecary. The poison was then tried on a barndoor fowl, which was not one penny the worse. But Martinez somehow procured

“a certain water that was good to be given as a drink.”

Perez asked Escovedo to dinner, Enriquez waited at table, and in each cup of wine that Escovedo drank, he, rather homeopathically, put a nutshell full of the water. Escovedo was no more poisoned than we were.

“It was ascertained that the beverage produced no effect whatever.”

A few days later, Escovedo again dined with the hospitable Perez. On this occasion they gave him some white powder in a dish of cream, and also gave him the poisoned water in his wine, thinking it a pity to waste that beverage. This time Escovedo was unwell, and again, when Enriquez induced a scullion in the royal kitchen to put more of the powder in a basin of broth in Escovedo’s own house. For this the poor kitchen maid who cooked the broth was hanged in the public square of Madrid, sin culpa. Philip slew that girl of his kitchen as surely as if he had taken a gun and shot her, but probably the royal confessor said that all was as it should be.

In spite of the resources of Spanish science, Escovedo persisted in living, and Perez determined that he must be shot or stabbed. Enriquez went off to his own country to find a friend who was an assassin, and to get

“a stiletto with a very fine blade, much better than a pistol to kill a man with.”

Enriquez, keeping a good thing in the family, enlisted his brother: and Martinez, from Aragon, brought ‘two proper kind of men’ Juan de Nera and Insausti, who, with the King’s scullion, undertook the job. Perez went to Alcala for Holy Week, just as the good Regent Murray left Edinburgh on the morning of Darnley’s murder, after sermon. ‘Have a halibi’ was the motto of both gentlemen.

The underlings dogged Escovedo in the evening of Easter Monday. Enriquez did not come across him, but Insausti did his business with one thrust, in a workmanlike way. The scullion hurried to Alcala, and told the news to Perez, who ‘was highly delighted.’

Perez visited France, where Henry IV., befriended him; he visited England, where Bacon was his host. In 1594 (?) he published his Relaciones and told the world the story of Philip’s conscience. That story must not be relied on, of course, and the autograph letters of Philip as to the murder of Escovedo are lost. But the copies of them at The Hague are regarded as authentic, and the convincing passages are underlined in red ink.

‘Bloody Perez,’ 3 as Bacon’s mother called him, died at Paris in November 1611, outliving the wretched master whom he had served so faithfully. Queen Elizabeth tried to induce Amyas Paulet to murder Mary Stuart. Paulet, as a man of honour, refused; he knew, too, that Elizabeth would abandon him to the vengeance of the Scots. Perez ought to have known that Philip would desert him: his folly was rewarded by prison, torture, and confiscation, which were not more than the man deserved who betrayed and murdered the servant of Don John of Austria.