despatch Escovedo, and Philip gave his orders to Perez. He repeated,
says Perez, in 1578, his words used in 1577: 'Make haste before he
kills us.'

As to this point of conscience, the right of a king to commit murder
on a subject for reasons of State, Protestant opinion seems to have
been lenient. When the Ruthvens were killed at Perth, on August 5,
1600, in an affair the most mysterious of all mysteries, the Rev.
Robert Bruce, a stern Presbyterian, refused to believe that James VI.
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. My sympathies, on this point,
are with the Inquisition.

Perez, having been commissioned to organise the crime, handed on the
job to Martinez, his steward. Martinez asked a ruffianly 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